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Game News Monty Markland Kickstarting an Apocalypse Now RPG(!), Josh Sawyer onboard

l3loodAngel

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JS was not the face of POE during the crowd funding. That's why it got funded. He was one of the faces. The more I heard from JS the more pessimistic I became about the project. And boy was I right.

Tranny was based on his design philosophy, btw.
 
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Ismaul

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech A Beautifully Desolate Campaign My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
JS was not the face of PEO during the crowd funding. That's why it got funded. He was one of the faces.
Still, he became the face of PoE in time, since he was the lead and is the dev that interacts with fans the most. He's the Obsidian dev that's most widely known outside these places. A casual or new cRPG player might have heard of him and played PoE, but most have not heard of Tim Cain and have no clue he was instrumental in designing the original Fallout. Same for the others devs.
 
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I have so many questions.

But they better get them polak poster people to handle the art-direction. They got a proper sinister/ethereal vibe going there.

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evdk

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I will only support this if a documentary chronicling the inevitable clusterfuck of a production is released alongside the finished "masterpiece." Traditions must be kept.
 

MLMarkland

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Are we to expect romances?
see other thread re French Plantation

Kickstarter is just part of the funding equation. It's all designed to be independent and to raise $ plenty to do a proper game outside the traditional system. We've spent a year building main site and everybody will see it soon (and it's a straight crowdfunding site designed to last for years -- basically Star Citizen-style site but with Apocalypse Now instead).

Announcements / launch of the main event coming shortly.

More design information coming soon, we've got 30 updates teed up, we're sorting through them to decide which three to push today.
 

Darth Roxor

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"We've spent a year building the main site and went to Kickstarter before telling anyone about it."

You know, Monty, if this thing didn't have people like you or Sawyer listed on the main page, I'd assume it to be either a joke or a scam.
 

MLMarkland

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"We've spent a year building the main site and went to Kickstarter before telling anyone about it."

You know, Monty, if this thing didn't have people like you or Sawyer listed on the main page, I'd assume it to be either a joke or a scam.

I appreciate that. And thanks. And believe I know it's a wild idea. We pitched EA in 2010. We've run the traps on this for years. We've got a crazy idea and we think it will work.

We've had this in development for a long long time and looked at almost all the angles.

I do want more design specific information up ASAP, but the whole overall strategy is sound (and we based it on Star Citizen which obviously is the most financially successful by far and we don't need to come even close to that outcome to be in great shape).
 

Bigg Boss

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I would update that thing ASAP. You were on the local news this morning so that is good I guess.

We need more information about combat, dialog, character progression, etc...

What is the game comparable to? How involved will some of these high profile guys be?
 

Vault Dweller

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...and we based it on Star Citizen which obviously is the most financially successful by far...
Kinda like saying let's do an investment thing based on Bernie Madoff's model which was very successful. It's not even that what Bernie did was a scam, it's that it's the kind of scam that very few people can pull off.

Anyway, why Apocalypse Now? You really think the "brand" has enough pull to conjure almost a mil out of very thin air and drive the media into frenzy? I don't think it aged well. Plus, while the Vietnam war is a sufficiently interesting subject to explore, exploring it from within the movie might be unnecessary limiting. Still, looking forward to the updates.
 

MLMarkland

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I would update that thing ASAP. You were on the local news this morning so that is good I guess.

We need more information about combat, dialog, character progression, etc...

What is the game comparable to? How involved will some of these high profile guys be?

Agree 100%. I will try to answer as many questions as I can here and on KS and elsewhere.

Design team (which is more than just the public folks) is in process of posting things about this stuff today, they will be up within an hour or two and probably we'll see three updates over course of day on this. Everything runs through a couple of people and they are fielding an enormous amount of inquiries right now so we're just moving as fast as we can.

...and we based it on Star Citizen which obviously is the most financially successful by far...
Kinda like saying let's do an investment thing based on Bernie Madoff's model which was very successful. It's not even that what Bernie did was a scam, it's that it's the kind of scam that very few people can pull off.

Anyway, why Apocalypse Now? You really think the "brand" has enough pull to conjure almost a mil out of very thin air and drive the media into frenzy? I don't think it aged well. Plus, while the Vietnam war is a sufficiently interesting subject to explore, exploring it from within the movie might be unnecessary limiting. Still, looking forward to the updates.

Apocalypse Now is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and his family. So he can license it directly to our game team and we just work with them on the creative / licensor concerns. This is a HUGE difference from working with Paramount Pictures or Ubisoft or WOTC/Hasbro where there are big bureaucracies that are very costly and ineffective to deal with on the creative level. That's an executive motivation for sure.

Creatively, everyone involved just loves the movie and wants to make a survival and horror styled RPG in the world. SS1/2, DX, VTMB, but not just copy things (though iterating from things that work is always smart in games) but letting the motion picture itself drive some of our design and creative decisions. Bad movie games and bad game movies come from ignoring the fundamental things about the original story or game that were great in the first place. We have an opportunity not to ignore that.

On the financial front, I mean, I care to some degree because it's money but, if I just cared about money I'd work on Wall Street. If crowdfunding is a fad, it's a fad. I don't think it is. I think it's the new way of doing things and what we're going to announce and show not just in relation to Kickstarter but our own site will help communicate that message.

At the same time, we're just game producers, directors and writers who have an idea and a means to take that idea to the world rather than to companies and we want to do that for exactly the reasons stated. The same thing that draws us to working with Francis draws us to working through crowdfunding -- it takes video game development and makes design and creative more important that financial projections and political machinations.

We want creative freedom. We've designed a way to ask for it. Now the world will say whether this particular idea is an idea it wants or not -- and I think it's going to take a little longer than with most things for many people to decide how they feel about this -- if it was simple we would have made it with a publisher 7 years ago and it wouldn't be worth taking to the people.
 

Vault Dweller

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Apocalypse Now is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and his family. So he can license it directly to our game team and we just work with them on the creative / licensor concerns. This is a HUGE difference from working with Paramount Pictures or Ubisoft or WOTC/Hasbro where there are big bureaucracies that are very costly and ineffective to deal with on the creative level.
Sure, but why do *you* need it in the first place? Are you a huge fan of the movie or do you really think the license adds that much, business- or art-wise? Just curious.

Creatively, everyone involved just loves the movie and wants to make a survival and horror styled RPG in the world.
Maybe my memory is hazy but I wouldn't file the movie under either survival or horror, hence the question.

At the same time, we're just game producers, directors and writers who have an idea and a means to take that idea to the world rather than to companies and we want to do that for exactly the reasons stated. The same thing that draws us to working with Francis draws us to working through crowdfunding -- it takes video game development and makes design and creative more important that financial projections and political machinations.

We want creative freedom. We've designed a way to ask for it. Now the world will say whether this particular idea is an idea it wants or not -- and I think it's going to take a little longer than with most things for many people to decide how they feel about this -- if it was simple we would have made it with a publisher 7 years ago and it wouldn't be worth taking to the people.
I hope it works out for you.
 

MLMarkland

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Apocalypse Now is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and his family. So he can license it directly to our game team and we just work with them on the creative / licensor concerns. This is a HUGE difference from working with Paramount Pictures or Ubisoft or WOTC/Hasbro where there are big bureaucracies that are very costly and ineffective to deal with on the creative level.
Sure, but why do *you* need it in the first place? Are you a huge fan of the movie or do you really think the license adds that much, business- or art-wise? Just curious.

Creatively, everyone involved just loves the movie and wants to make a survival and horror styled RPG in the world.
Maybe my memory is hazy but I wouldn't file the movie under either survival or horror, hence the question.

At the same time, we're just game producers, directors and writers who have an idea and a means to take that idea to the world rather than to companies and we want to do that for exactly the reasons stated. The same thing that draws us to working with Francis draws us to working through crowdfunding -- it takes video game development and makes design and creative more important that financial projections and political machinations.

We want creative freedom. We've designed a way to ask for it. Now the world will say whether this particular idea is an idea it wants or not -- and I think it's going to take a little longer than with most things for many people to decide how they feel about this -- if it was simple we would have made it with a publisher 7 years ago and it wouldn't be worth taking to the people.
I hope it works out for you.

Thank you.

I am a huge fan of the movie and I think it adds art-wise. Mainly because the movie is a retelling of two historical narratives (The Odyssey and Heart of Darkness) and so we think an interactive version accomplishes a continuation of the tradition.
 

MLMarkland

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That's from a narrative gameplay POV. From a design gameplay POV, it has always struck us that the movie itself is very stealth/survival/horror/rpg like in its fundamentals.

It's one of the few war movies that isn't guns blazing regularly. Willard only fires his weapon twice. So a movie where the fundamentals are not combat focused helps us make the design case for less combat focused gameplay. (That's the general answer -- updates and me will have more specific answers later -- I'm the director not the lead designer and we do differentiate between those roles on this project for a few reasons).

EDIT
Combat / Progression / Dialog / Stealth updates are all queued up -- people checking things and will start rolling these out today (and update the main front page of Kickstarter project).
 
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Night Goat

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Is it April 1 already? Also, why do I need a boat to drop acid? I can drop acid anywhere...
Speaking from experience, a boat is probably the best place to drop acid. You feel at one with the sea and all those who have sailed since the beginning of time. I recommend going to an uninhabited island and seeing some five-dimensional wildlife.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Okay, maybe a naive question, maybe its been asked already, but .. isn't Mr. Coppola like super rich? If he wants this game to be made, couldn't he just dump the money on it by himself? Or ask some of his rich hollywood buddies?
 

MLMarkland

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Okay, maybe a naive question, maybe its been asked already, but .. isn't Mr. Coppola like super rich? If he wants this game to be made, couldn't he just dump the money on it by himself? Or ask some of his rich hollywood buddies?

It's a totally valid question. I think the simple answer is: Coppolas are in the wine business and the movie business not the game business.

The game team is asking for the money here not FFC. Mister Coppola will certainly profit, hopefully well, from the game version of his motion picture as a licensor.

But this wouldn't be a thing absent the game team licensing the property and launching the KS and the post-KS site (which will be live soon).
 

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