Precinct - Police Quest spiritual successor by Jim Walls

[Kz3r0]

I like the irony of your analogy with Hitchcock, whose one of his most famous movies is North by Northwest and who is also fairly famous for jumping from mystery/thriller to romance or even to straight-up horror.

Avoid to talk about something you don't have any clue about please, read the book Truffaut wrote about him to see the consistency of his work and the themes it contained, without mentioning the meddling of the producers, like the fact that Cary Grant couldn't play the part of an assassin or the imposed romances, does this remember you of something?

Or how many directors and actors are critically acclaimed when they move out of their comfort zone. Films are the last place where you should look in order to prove a point.

INNOVASHUN!!!!!

 

[buzz]

Sounds a bit like revisionist history to me, to be honest. While Hitchcock is one of the more consistent directors, he is also the guy who made this and there's also the majority of his silent era of films to consider. Also, whether or not the producers changed or forced his hand with some of the movies is fairly irrelevant because artists have always been put under constraints. Saying that romance was imposed in Vertigo for example is dumb because it's an adaptation and romance is a big part of the movie.

But anyway, the entire analogy is failed in the first place. Precint was still meant to be an adventure game about a police officer, full of typical procedures and more "realistic" encounters with the criminals. Thematically it was consistent with the first Police Quest games. The changes were mostly technological, so a better comparison would be between Hitchcock's silent movies with his black and white movies followed by his color movies. I assume Suejak just wanted to poke fun at Shyalaman who was initially viewed as the next Hitchcock or some bullshit.

 

[Kz3r0]

Saying that romance was imposed in Vertigo for example is dumb because it's an adaptation and romance is a big part of the movie.

Mine was a general statement, and in Vertigo's case more than romance we are talking about fetishism and perversion rolled into a thriller.

 

[tuluse]

The last express isn't first person. At least not all of it.

 

[MaskedMan]

Dear Precinct Fans and Backers,

Unfortunately, it appears our timing for the presentation of Precinct just wasn't right. So, sadly, I'm writing to inform you that further production will be set aside at this time.

I want to thank each and everyone of you from the bottom of my heart for all the support and encouragement you have shown throughout this campaign. It was great fun hooking up and talking with some of the old fans once again. I have to say, Sierra fans are the greatest!

Also, I want to thank the Precinct team for their long hours and the many sacrifices they all made during our campaign. It was a labor of love for sure! I especially want to give two thumbs up to Tiny Castle Studios for the great job they did with the Precinct presentation. Your hard work, sacrifice and belief in the project was inspirational. It was great working with you all.

This is not the end! Precinct will rise again! It's too good not to.

Stay in touch!

Jim Walls

 

[suejak]

It's so weird that he still seems to think it's a good idea.

 

[Kz3r0]

Unfortunately, it appears our timing for the presentation of Precinct just wasn't right.

hard to tell if its spin or misdiagnosis

One of the oldest excuses out there, 'the public wasn't ready for our revolutionary masterpiece', it's the mild version of 'the public didn't understand us'.

 

[Blackthorne]

As a colleague of mine said, it boils down to the fact that they did not respect their audience.

Bt

 

[Stabwound]

Haha, yes!!

Depending on the situation, we may decide to try again someday. The backing community are wonderfully supportive of Jim Walls making a new game. Likewise, our team remains passionate about Precinct and are hopeful there is a way to make Precinct a reality in the future.

Yeah, well I don't see that reflected in the number of backers or the fan reaction anywhere else. It's crazy how quickly these guys give up, change ideas, post huge blog posts full of encouragement and promotion and then cancel the whole thing entirely barely 24 hours later.

 

[DeepOcean]

Buzz and Maiandros, seriously guys, even Skyway on a bad day is more coherent than you two. It gone from white knighting Jim Walls and for some reason be a dumbfuck to Blackthorn to film analyses. Jeez, the problem was never about if the game was first person or not but the problem was that the campaign utterly failed in assuring people that this game would even close to be an traditional adventure game. Adventure fans hate shit like "Along with staple elements such as adventure and puzzles, players also encounter intense fast action gameplay sequences that include shootouts, high speed car chases, investigations, foot pursuits, hand-to-hand combat, and more." in their adventure games because most of time they are half assed and we are talking about a kickstarter, what makes the chances of those sequences being half assed even higher. Things like "we can expand to new audience but retain the old mechanics" isn't something assuring as I already heard that talk before.

 

[RPGMaster]

It's so weird that he still seems to think it's a good idea.

Rather than being compared to Hitchcock he should probably be compared to Ed Wood.

 

[DalekFlay]

Most failed kickstarters blame timing or fatigue or other bullshit. It's probably PR, you don't want to announce your idea sucked.

 

[Stabwound]

Nah, it's just a coincidence that timing and fatigue seems to only affect the games like Pricinct, that look awful and have a pitch and ideas that change more often than most people here change their underwear.

Walls is so out of touch he has no idea what people want anymore. He's clueless. Plus, he hasn't been a cop in nearly 30 years; how is he going to be able to create believable modern day police scenarios? The problem here is that he seems to have his half-baked idea, and then a bunch of his buddies acting as Yes Men but having no fucking idea what they're doing or why no one wants to back their game.

It may be insincere, but if they pitched a point and click adventure like PQ it would have probably been funded. Certainly not that budget, but they could have made the game with ADGI and probably did quite well for themselves. But nope, Mr. Walls wants you to play Johnny P. Limbs, the pair of detached hands who wanders around in 3D spraying pepper spray and driving cars.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Walls is so out of touch he has no idea what people want anymore. He's clueless.

Yeah.. what people? The current popamole generation? Or which people does he need to know what they want? The less he knows about those, the better. But since you said that this game is popamole then it means he knows... or... wait, which one is it?

Plus, he hasn't been a cop in nearly 30 years; how is he going to be able to create believable modern day police scenarios?

I'm sure you'll be able to tell what's believable or not, just as you were able to with Police Quest. Give me a fucking break. The game may look like shit, but that's one fucking retarded argument against it. That leaving aside that he most likely still has contacts in the police department.

 

[Blackthorne]

I always thought that a cop game set in the late 70's, early 80's would be more interesting than all the cop/investigation these days. It's all about forensics/computers/DNA/semen these days - gimme a cop game set before they had that kind of technology. You know, when you used to have to detect and investigate and use some crazy techniques to get things done! My grandfather was a police officer from the 50's to the 80's, and was even Chief for a time. The stories he told.... that would be a game.


Bt

 

[buzz]

Adventure fans hate shit like "Along with staple elements such as adventure and puzzles, players also encounter intense fast action gameplay sequences that include shootouts, high speed car chases, investigations, foot pursuits, hand-to-hand combat, and more." in their adventure games because most of time they are half assed and we are talking about a kickstarter, what makes the chances of those sequences being half assed even higher.

I'm aware of that. Which is why Police Quest was probably the least famous and well-remembered series from the Sierra adventure games.
I'm just asking people to stop having some inane invisible standards about a series like this. PQ had shootouts and car chases (maybe they weren't INTENSE, but I'm sure the developers wanted them to feel like that even for a bit). This isn't like King's Quest 8 or LSL Magna Cum Laude where you totally shit on a formula that was established for 6 or 7 games. It's a franchise that always tried something else and never found its way.

It's a bit like complaining about a fictional Full Throttle sequel/spiritual successor having scenes where you ride a chopper or fight some other dudes. Or complaining that you play as a girl for several hours in a future LSL game. Or like I said already, complaining that the new Tex Murphy game is 3d with FMV instead of "traditional" point and click 2D game with drawn graphics which is "what people want" apparently. Shit, even complaining about QfI or Mage's Initiation for having stats and action scenes.

 

[Jarpie]

I always thought that a cop game set in the late 70's, early 80's would be more interesting than all the cop/investigation these days. It's all about forensics/computers/DNA/semen these days - gimme a cop game set before they had that kind of technology. You know, when you used to have to detect and investigate and use some crazy techniques to get things done! My grandfather was a police officer from the 50's to the 80's, and was even Chief for a time. The stories he told.... that would be a game.


Bt

I would pay for Columbo: The Point'n'Click Adventure Game, "Just one more thing...". Too bad Peter Falk is dead so he can't do VOs.

 

[Stabwound]

Walls is so out of touch he has no idea what people want anymore. He's clueless.

Yeah.. what people? The current popamole generation? Or which people does he need to know what they want? The less he knows about those, the better. But since you said that this game is popamole then it means he knows... or... wait, which one is it?

I dunno what that means, but what I meant is that people come to these kickstarters expecting something that emulates the style of game they're famous for, not something completely different. He doesn't realize that it's the adventure game aspect of the PQ series that made it popular, not that it was a flashy, formulaic police simulator, and that's what he's offering here. He doesn't know his audience or how this shit works.

If he had pitched a point-and-click mystery/police game with retro graphics (or even with modern ones) and a more realistic budget, he would have succeeded most likely. But it's hard to say, since they seem to be very fucking inept at crowdfunding and PR as it is.

 

[suejak]

Adventure fans hate shit like "Along with staple elements such as adventure and puzzles, players also encounter intense fast action gameplay sequences that include shootouts, high speed car chases, investigations, foot pursuits, hand-to-hand combat, and more." in their adventure games because most of time they are half assed and we are talking about a kickstarter, what makes the chances of those sequences being half assed even higher.

I'm aware of that. Which is why Police Quest was probably the least famous and well-remembered series from the Sierra adventure games.
I'm just asking people to stop having some inane invisible standards about a series like this. PQ had shootouts and car chases (maybe they weren't INTENSE, but I'm sure the developers wanted them to feel like that even for a bit).

It really didn't. It had adventure-game shootouts where the game would judge whether you solved the pre-shootout puzzles and handled the shootout "properly". You had car chases in the first game... in the sense that you needed to line up your dot behind another dot and hit "siren".

It's so absurd to me that you think this is equivalent to action sequences in an entirely 3D first-person game where agency is granted by disembodied hands. None of the other games had driving simulators in any real sense -- in PQ 1, I ran every light and drove up the down lane 100% of the time, with zero consequences. I made 90-degree turns and I could drive through the city backwards without even realizing because the game didn't distinguish between the front of my car and the back, because my car was a THREE-PIXEL WHITE RECTANGLE. It was extremely simple and not at all "actiony" like the popular FPS-inspired gameplay videos we've been shown.

Your point about series consistency seems entirely reliant on Police Quest games post-4, which didn't even involve Jim Walls and nobody considers to be real Police Quests. It's like considering Magna Cum Laude to be a Larry game. Sure, you COULD... but what the fuck is wrong with you.

 

[suejak]

Also, I think what you're missing, Buzz, is that every game post-4 WAS considered to be completely shitting on a formula. SWAT and SWAT 2 were both considered to be corporate bastardizations of a beloved series. The fact that you keep referring to them as evidence of "experimentality" and part of "a series that never found its way" is why you're so full of shit.

Jim Walls ran this Kickstater. Jim Walls PQ games were straight-up adventures. They had very very minimal "action" sequences -- nothing more than Astro Chicken in Space Quest. It's like saying that because Space Quest had Astro Chicken, SpaceVenture should be a first-person game with a mouse-driven spaceflight simulator.

 

[Stabwound]

Yeah, I just don't get buzz here. I can't agree with suejak enough. I have no idea where you're pulling these opinions from. SWAT had nothing to do with PQ other than using the franchise as name recognition. It's like saying the new Might & Magic X game should be a turn-based strategy game, or a FPS action game with RPG elements, because that's what the series was after the last CRPG in MM9. If someone pitched a successor to Might & Magic, they'd sure as hell be pitching a first-person CRPG, not a top down strategy game like the Heroes of MM series or Might & Magic or Dark Messiah.

A spiritual successor to a game is a game in a very similar style to what you're paying homage to. Disembodied hands beating people with batons is not what Jim Walls is famous for, and that's not what PQ was like. It would be like if Roberta Williams pitched a new KQ, except it was a game like Myst but set in Daventry, or hell, a pseudo 3rd person adventure game/clunky RPG like KQ8 was. That is not what Roberta was famous for. There's a reason all these old guys are making games that appeal to their former fanbase. What do you think a Venn diagram would look like depicting fans of PQ1-4 and first person action adventure games? Probably not much of an overlap, eh?

 

[Blackthorne]

Really, Robert Lindley ran this Kickstarter. He was the mouth-piece for Jim. He was the one guiding things - the fault here is on him. Jim was just a name, and the idea. To me, it feels like Robert guided this campaign into the ground - because Jim really had no clue how to navigate anything in today's world. He had a couple of vague ideas about what to do, but other people were banking on his name and nostalgia - and that really didn't work out like they hoped.


Bt

 

[Keshik]

I guess the best we can hope for now is a spiritual successor to PQ

 

[Boleskine]

I guess the best we can hope for now is a spiritual successor to PQ

Himalaya Studios has expressed some interest in doing this, I believe. Hell, they were originally going to work on Jim's new game.

 

[suejak]

I mean, they're probably just as qualiied as Jim to do it.

There's a surprising number of police adventure games, but none that get it right like PQ 1 and 2. Maybe it's the parser.