ELEX Pre-Release Thread

[Trodat]

If they release it somewhere around Q2 of 2017, that would still give them time to make this look like a contender. 8 or 9 months of polishing can do wonders, since they already have somewhat functional game.

I think most people agree with this, but currently ELEX has this unpleasing russian shovelware look. I don't know.

Just look at any video of Risen 1 and you can see the difference.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I get the impression, that what we see now won't be too different from what we'll get at release, I don't think their polishing will result in much better animations.

Well that much is certain :piranha bytes:

I think most people agree with this, but currently ELEX has this unpleasing russian shovelware look. I don't know.

Yeah, it's true. I blame the all-present greyness.

 

[Tito Anic]

http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/elex-preview-386.html

4 factions confirmed

Spoiler

The game features four factions. The Beserkers live in the forests, are fearless fighters and convert Elex to mana. With this mana they are able to make the world around them green again, but they also use the mana as a source for magic. The Clerics live in the volcanic mountains and have over time, gathered knowledge about the available technology on their world. They do not consume Elex, but instead use it as a power source for their machines, but not their weapons. The Outlaws, live in the deserts and they are anarchists. They steal and plunder whatever they can find and convert Elex into a drug that they use. The last faction are the Albs, who live in the icy mountains and not only use Elex for weapons, but also consume it directly and have, because of that, become emotionless, machinelike even. They have however gained a lot of strength and powerful skills because of the Elex consumption.

There will be skills in the game that will improve your abilities using the jet-pack.

balance

Opponents do not scale with your level

The game support crafting, where you can craft your potions or improve your weapons with objects found in the world.

Your actions and choices matter in the game. When you draw your weapon the people around you will react to that. When you steal or kill someone, there will be repercussions. You might need to pay money, or traders will not trade with you anymore or you could even be chased by headhunters.

The fighting system in Elex has been changed compared to their previous games. According to the presenter it is now a little bit more like Dark Souls.

Didnt play DS so i do not know if it is good or bad

There are companions in the game that you can take with you and they will reside in your own home base. Every companion has their own background story and you can build a relationship with them through your actions and conversations. If you keep on doing things that they don't like, they eventually will leave you.

Romances

There is respawning in the game. It is implemented such that a variety of monsters will respawn at different locations in the game.

 

[Bubbles]

The Watch talks about "the presenter", so he probably got the ex-JoWood producer who's running their 15-minute solo presentations. We got 40 minutes, all in German, which will be a beast to write up

 

[undecaf]

The most heavy, ranged weapon is a grenade launcher

Yeah. Based on the videos it looked weaker and clumsier than a sword.

But obviously a trainer will train your grenades for a fee.

 

[toro]

http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/elex-preview-386.html

4 factions confirmed

Spoiler

The game features four factions. The Beserkers live in the forests, are fearless fighters and convert Elex to mana. With this mana they are able to make the world around them green again, but they also use the mana as a source for magic. The Clerics live in the volcanic mountains and have over time, gathered knowledge about the available technology on their world. They do not consume Elex, but instead use it as a power source for their machines, but not their weapons. The Outlaws, live in the deserts and they are anarchists. They steal and plunder whatever they can find and convert Elex into a drug that they use. The last faction are the Albs, who live in the icy mountains and not only use Elex for weapons, but also consume it directly and have, because of that, become emotionless, machinelike even. They have however gained a lot of strength and powerful skills because of the Elex consumption.

There will be skills in the game that will improve your abilities using the jet-pack.

balance

Opponents do not scale with your level

The game support crafting, where you can craft your potions or improve your weapons with objects found in the world.

Your actions and choices matter in the game. When you draw your weapon the people around you will react to that. When you steal or kill someone, there will be repercussions. You might need to pay money, or traders will not trade with you anymore or you could even be chased by headhunters.

The fighting system in Elex has been changed compared to their previous games. According to the presenter it is now a little bit more like Dark Souls.

Didnt play DS so i do not know if it is good or bad

There are companions in the game that you can take with you and they will reside in your own home base. Every companion has their own background story and you can build a relationship with them through your actions and conversations. If you keep on doing things that they don't like, they eventually will leave you.

Romances

There is respawning in the game. It is implemented such that a variety of monsters will respawn at different locations in the game.

Have you seen the gameplay footage?

 

[Tito Anic]

Have you seen the gameplay footage?

Why asking?

 

[Alienman]

The Watch talks about "the presenter", so he probably got the ex-JoWood producer who's running their 15-minute solo presentations. We got 40 minutes, all in German, which will be a beast to write up

Looking forward to the article.

 

[toro]

Have you seen the gameplay footage?

Why asking?

I don't understand how you can be excited for this game after watching the footage.

The gameworld lacks internal coherency and personally I cannot imagine any viable scenario in which PB will deliver a good story in this world.

Hope I'm wrong but in your place I would not hold my breath for this game.

 

[Tito Anic]

I don't understand how you can be excited for this game after watching the footage.

I like free roam rpg's. Since Gothic 1 i saw nobody who produced better open world rpg's than Piranha. I own all their games.

The gameworld lacks internal coherency and personally I cannot imagine any viable scenario in which PB will deliver a good story in this world.

Quite the contrary. i said earlier that the world looks coherent to me.

Hope I'm wrong but in your place I would not hold my breath for this game.

Why not? They did few top-notch games and few weaker titles. So what? They are small studio, passionate about their work, i believe they are capable to deliver good game.

 

[Excidium II]

I own all their games.

Even Risen 2 & 3?

 

[Maggot]

That office looks pretty comfy and laid-back.

 

[Excidium II]

PB is a p. small company.

 

[Latelistener]

Hope I'm wrong but in your place I would not hold my breath for this game.

Seems like the only way to be pleasantly surprised these days is by expecting shit, but even if they will screw it up again, by that time there will be some new info about Spacetime.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I own all their games.

Even Risen 2 & 3?

Risen 3 is a better game than a good portion of codex-approved post-decline crpgs.

 

[Darth Roxor]

it most certainly isn't

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, Alpha Protocol is obviously THIS MUCH better.

I finally watched those gameplay videos and my optimism waned a fair bit. Seems like they got a bit of a Oblivion=>F3 situation going on, where Elex seems like a total conversion mod for R3 rather than a new game. And a lazy one at that - those rat creatures for example have exactly the same animations and almost the same model and textures as the ones from R3.

 

[Goblino]

I don't think reused assets is grounds for hating them outright. What they need after Risen is balanced combat that doesn't play like ass, a seamless and coherent open world ( no instances of the infamous lava river), and characters that aren't offensively stupid looking (tits). My biggest fear is that the game will just be another messy poorly-thought-out world with combat that makes me feel shitty. Sorta like how Risen 2 said "hey! World's piratey now. MC is an alcoholic sack of shit now. Remember Girl? Girl has huuuuuugeeee titties now. Suddenly guns and voodoo! What's magic? Who are the Patriots?"

 

[HoboForEternity]

The lack of magic is pretty well explained imo and the the giant milk bags wasnt so apparent in 2 compared to in 3.

That said, 3 is a better game than 2

 

[Goblino]

The complaint is that the world had no series continuity and had little internal coherence. This is made worse by them destroying the perfectly functional combat of risen 1. Risen 1 had the combat that G3 should have had and Risen 2 and 3 didn't improve on it. R2 was 3 steps back and R3 was 1 step forward. PB took good material and completely wrecked it. That's why I don't trust all the "cool" new stuff in ELEX. It's like they're overreaching for cool stuff to put in and the player experience suffers.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I don't think reused assets is grounds for hating them outright. What they need after Risen is balanced combat that doesn't play like ass, a seamless and coherent open world ( no instances of the infamous lava river), and characters that aren't offensively stupid looking (tits). My biggest fear is that the game will just be another messy poorly-thought-out world with combat that makes me feel shitty. Sorta like how Risen 2 said "hey! World's piratey now. MC is an alcoholic sack of shit now. Remember Girl? Girl has huuuuuugeeee titties now. Suddenly guns and voodoo! What's magic? Who are the Patriots?"

Reusing assets isn't bad and can show that the company's got its priorities right. Wasting money on reinventing the wheel as a A/B tier company means you are aping a AAA company but don't have the resources.

You shouldn't reuse the assets though if they are bad or don't fit your new game. And this might be the case here with their animations. If you want to throw out R3's combat and become more Dark Souls like, your animations need to support this.

 

[ortucis]

OK, just saw the 17-min gameplay footage.

1) Visuals are a mish-mash of their previous games and this new one. It does NOT look good in most areas. Medieval RPG assets stick out like shit clashing with the "sci-fi" assets. They obviously re-used a lot of content from Risen here. But they are a small studio and I can't blame them for that. If they were Bethesda, I would bitch and whine about it, but they are Indie developers. So whatever.

2) That "ass jet-pack" looks retarded. It's more likely to burn your ass and run out of juice, considering the size and placement. Then again, SCI-FI so maybe it's powered by the souls of dead babies.

3) They should look at Division and how NOT to do ranged combat in fucking RPG's. Enemies that take forever to die with guns, looks retarded, kills immersion and looks even more retarded than the first time it looked retarded.

4) AI is non-existant. I know it's a "pre-alpha" video (they showed alpha of Risen too, but it was same during release) but AI is designed to run at you or stand around in middle of the road shooting at you, with a glacial pace. Those sci-fi generic soldiers were even dumber than the fucking animals who managed to dodge player melee attacks like champs.

5) Visuals are OK. Looks pretty similar to Risen 3, to be honest. They REALLY need to tone down that fucking Ambient Occlusion though (or implement a better one, like the one from nVidia or the one Unreal 4 uses). Anyway, it is nothing bad. Maybe they should switch to Unreal 4..

6) I still want to play it. After the shit-fest of Risen series, this actually reminds me of the fun Gothic 2/3 games (and yes, I like both G2 and G3). I just REALLY hope they actually create the open world games similar to G3, instead of making a huge world and then linearing the shit out of it like they did with Risen crap. They hired the same guy who did story for Risen, so not sure it's a good thing or a bad thing. Risen story was same generic shit (lol Lizard people.. what next? Crab people are the "big bad" in ELEX?) and Gothic had more interesting world in the end.




PS: If I had the choice between playing Risen series and Fallout 4, I'd probably play DeusEx for the 90th time.

 

[Caconym]

 

[anus_pounder]

Will this anyway. I hope Ludo Lense does a review for this. Spider's Technomancer vs ELEX, which is better and why?

 

[DeepOcean]

3) They should look at Division and how NOT to do ranged combat in fucking RPG's. Enemies that take forever to die with guns, looks retarded, kills immersion and looks even more retarded than the first time it looked retarded.

I hate this so much, okay, you don't want to make guns so overpowered that melee is useless but boy, making guns do pityful damage on each shot is NOT the way to do it. It is better to remove guns than to implement guns on this awful way. It is so retarded that even generic bandits can take shots to the face like champs, it removes the fun of using guns completely.

Why not making guns really powerful but with rare ammo? Why not having some enemies that can have energy shields to block bullets making melee a better alternative to kill them(this is a sci fi setting afterall)? I dunno, they need to find a better alternative than just making guns do shit damage.