Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[Gakkone]

No. He cannot be helped. There are any number of reasons why he's there and incapable of being saved, but partly it's to make clear that you cannot help everyone with their issues and partly it's because he's meant to be an embodiment of the passive acceptance of bad fortune.

Nice. I can appreciate that even though I visited the place like 20 times desperately trying to find a way to help that sad little fellow.

 

[thesoup]

Well excuse me for not noticing.
Nice review piydek and nice job inclining the site.

 

[MRY]

Piydek's review is so completely awesome it feels like I ghost wrote it.

(Which I didn't! I don't even speak Croatian.)

 

[piydek]

Thanks very much thesoup, MRY and the rest of you guys . Yeah, it was written by me. I really loved the game...

 

[Blaine]

I finally realized where that "pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma" reference is from: A Canticle for Leibowitz. I started rereading it the other day, hadn't touched it since the late '90s.

The 1960s were a fantastic era for speculative science fiction.

 

[made]

Thanks for the info. Nothing major but it's a nice touch. Reminded me a bit of the way Chrono Trigger handled things.


And indeed not many adventure games had endings influenced by early choices. All I can think of :

Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis had 3 distinct paths, which you could choose fairly early in the game, but the actual endings were the same for all paths.
Blade Runner had many different endings, based on various actions/choices.
Clock Tower had about 10 different endings.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream kept track of the morality of your choices, and this affected each character's ending and the group ending, but it was very difficult to actually get the "good" ending.
Silent Hill 1&2 had various endings but we're crossing into the survival horror territory here.

You can add the Star Trek adventures to the list. Several ways to finish missions, and I think multiple endings at least in one game. Not much in terms of consequences though iirc, just a slap on the wrist during debriefing and possibly an early game over if you get too many innocents killed.

 

[pocahaunted]

What a great game, hands down my favorite game of the last few years.

While on one hand I'd love for the setting to be expanded upon, I also feel that the game's relatively short length is a positive feature.

 

[piydek]

While on one hand I'd love for the setting to be expanded upon, I also feel that the game's relatively short length is a positive feature.

Yeah, i feel that any kind of "epicness" would be a complete death of many of the things Primordia is great for. This especially pertains to my thought that Primordia is - in many ways - great especially for the fact that is suggests many things, but doesn't spell them out. That leaves room for your interaction with the game as a player, that's what makes it cerebral, thought-provoking and fantastical in the best sense.

 

[Darth Roxor]

As far as I agree with the 'unanswered questions', I don't think there's been too many of them, actually. At least, not the important ones - the big questions have pretty much all been answered in the game. The only ones that are a mystery are those of flavour - what happened to the other great cities? Have the remaining humans gone to the moon? What actually caused the war? Etc.

Also, Primordia is the best Wadjet Eye Game thus far. There, I said it.

 

[MRY]

Thanks for the kind words. I especially like that people have a positive view of the non-epicness, since a fair number of reviews have complained that Horatio's motivations never become grand enough in Metropol. (Apparently, fighting for your survival and independence doesn't cut it.) I think Darth Roxor is right that at the end of the day, everything in the main plotline is pretty clearly spelled out. That said, I think even in the main plotline, the characters' motivations remain fairly open to interpretation, which may be atypical for games. Also, while everything is pretty clearly spelled out, Primordia may be at least a little more close-mouthed than most games and does, to some extent, ask the player to put stuff together on his own, rather than having it all summed up in some expository dialogue. Having even the flavor lore open also seems maybe a little better than most games, where the extent of what exists in the game world is almost exactly coterminous with the extent of what exists in the game. Anyway, I'll stop trying to toot my own horn! That's piydek's job anyway!

 

[piydek]

Regarding the "suggested but not completely spelled out" things i had in mind, I'd just like to point out in general what i thought. I'll put it all in spoiler tag although it's all general:

Spoiler

I didn't really think of anything that's strictly related to plotline, but primarily things like the game suggesting various ideas to ponder and my takes on those ideas. Some of them, and the way in which they really tickled my mind were:

- Metromind being exactly what today's techno-cybernetic idea of science is. The idea of measuring and managing everything in techno-cybernetic way. And that same idea being the absolute measurement of being as such.
- Metromind's idea of progress - which is completely equivalent to efficiency. Another dominant idea today.
- The fact that metromind is reffered to as a somewhat "lesser" computer, designed for a specific and completely functional task of managing trains, but now has not only the entire city, but the "social" existence of this city to manage/structure, for which it's incompetent due to its very nature. (of course, the whole idea of any computer/robot in the game being able to basically self-program oneself one the fly, which is basically the equivalent of self-consciousness, is actually anthropomorphization and therefore not fully consistent with the "robot-world". But this is absolutely necessary to tell this story and it reveals that it's ultimately about humans, not robots.)
- The relation of arbiter/metromind with executive government (metromind) being at the same time also judicial, with legislative being reduced to the absolute idea of efficiency. Also, the fact that metromind controls the only means of force in this society (scraper, which is basically police/military). This is a completely totalitarian thing, which IMHO resembles situation in today's western world which is based on the technological idea of science, capitalism, knowledge as mere means of production in tertiary and quaternary sectors (and not as striving for truth), absolutely every thing and every idea being commodified, consumerism replacing consciousness etc.

Lots of other ideas as well. The fact that the game enables this kind of thoughtful interaction with itself and doesn't directly tell you what to think about these things is what I've had in mind. Another really great and grey-area thing was the final speech of metromind where you see that it also has valid points. It's merely a "victim" of what it is. Also, is there a "good" ending? I don't think so - even the one where you end up being with crispin/clarity and all the friends has a solemn tone to it: what will we do differently? That's why my favourite ending is transmitting the virus via radio / death to all / nothingness / void one.

I'll stop rambling here.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Reading this thread from the start is a bit lulzy

"Well, the die is cast with Primordia. I decided to release as freeware for several reasons. The main one being the extra effort involved, effort that could go in the game itself."

Also, Crispin's early draft on the first page looks better than the final result. He'd just need that hueg middle clown-nose light removed and he'd be great.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

finished this the other day, fun game. The real gem was the setting though, it'd make for a fantastic RPG.

 

[MRY]

So I have a totally lame request that's sure to invite the HiveMind's scornful destruction (and, perhaps, rightfully so), but if you guys played the game and liked it, maybe throw a vote our way at http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2012/indie/adventure/. As lame as these things are, what Wormwood really needs in order to make another game is a reputation to trade on; sales are less important to me than some framework for promoting our brand when we try to break more ground on the next game.

That said, with this weird "vote every day" thing, this is almost certainly too late to matter, which makes it both shameless and worthless. Still, "Shameless and Worthless" makes a good tagline for Wormwood Studios!

(Even more shamelessly, I'm now cross-posting this in the LP thread too.)

 

[JudasIscariot]

My only regret is that I have but one vote to give. :D

 

[MRY]

Wound up taking #3. If I'd been a little more timely in bringing this to the Codex's attention, I've now doubt that you would have carried the field. Thanks for all the support!

 

[iqzulk]

MRY, Victor Phlug, I might have an unusual question for you.
I'll start from afar.

1) From what I understand, Dave influenced your game pretty heavily. At the very least, he provided both the voice cast and the composer whose soundtrack made it into the release version of the game. And while I understand this to be a very sensitive area - and while it would probably be not so ethical for you to voice any concerns about his efforts in public, I still want to discuss a couple of questions regarding his influence. First of all, soundtrack. It is both my opinion and opinion of some people I've spoken to in the different corners of the Web, that the soundtrack to Primordia is quite bland actually - and it simply doesn't do justice to its visual component (and I personally don't think that vocal track that goes with Credits fits the mood of the game at all). Moreover, I haven't encountered a single person who would say that soundtrack was his favorite aspect of the game - it doesn't say much, of course, but it certainly isn't a compliment as well. Second, the voices. I do not have any complaints about the quality of voice acting in the game. But. What I've heard multiple times is that while the actors do know how to act - and provide the game with a great deal of personality, they also make it sound like "just another Wadjet game". "Gee, I wonder where I've heard that voice" - "Riiiight, that's the detective dude from Resonance", etc. etc. Moreover, I haven't played the game with commentaries, but I've heard from a person who did play with commentaries (it's not the most reliable source though - so I could have just been misinformed), that there was original voice cast team, which was picked by you and which later got disbanded by Dave and switched for a new voice cast team - the one that made it into the release. And it really makes me wonder, what did that original team sound like.

2) I do appreciate the lowres lo-fi aspect of the graphics - and it does indeed give the game a certain charm. Still, there is one concern that gnawed on me ever since I saw this game for a first time. The squareness and the blockiness of the picture simply doesn't go all that well with the smooth curved lines of mud and almost organic forms of hopelessly rusted machinery. In my opinion, the resolution aspect of the game conflicts with the visual aspect of its design - and greatly diminishes the impact from the artwork. Still, it is your game, and you do, of course, have each and every right to consider it (or any other style) the canonical look of the game. I wouldn't even voice my concerns over this issue, were it not for one detail. From what I gathered from the interviews, one of the main reasons you went with 240p was the animation issue. Higher resolutions would require more frames of animation (in order to make it look reasonably smooth) - and going with higher res would slow down the development tremendously (to the point of the game still not being released as of this moment). Still, it left me with a distinctive impression that you don't actually consider 240p to be the only canonical res for the background artwork - and were it not for animation concerns, you would probably go with a somewhat higher res.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Now - to the main question at hand. Is there any chance, something like "Primordia: Developer's Cut" could appear some time into the future? With the original voice cast, rewritten soundtrack, higher res artwork, maybe - trimmed or expanded endings (some of the "false" endings simply felt out of character - and like they were simply tacked on, quantity over quality)? The way Primordia should've been were it not for (insert whatever you want here). The ultimate original vision, no compromises, no unrealized potential. Or is the current version the final one we'll ever get (not that there is anything particularly wrong with it)?

Thank you for your attention and time.

 

[MRY]

Thanks for your interest in the game! Victor's answer may be different from mine, but here goes.

(1) It depends what you mean "influenced" and "pretty heavily." If you mean, "Was largely responsible for audio" the answer is yes. But if you mean that he had a heavy role in shaping the rest of the creative vision of the game (or, as one reviewer suggested, rewriting dialogues or something), the answer is no. For the most part, his work was on the audio. On that note, since I never played the WEG catalog, I can't really speak to the recycling of voice actors issue. I prefer the VO we wound up with to what we started with, but I know Vic liked some of what we started with more than where we ended up. I also really liked Nathaniel's music. Here, again, there was a previous set of music, which I think Vic liked in certain respects more than the soundtrack we got. That said, I think the suggestion that they're widespread skepticism about the soundtrack isn't correct; it doesn't mean you're wrong to think it bland, but -- having read, as far as I know, all 100+ reviews of the game, I would say something like 35% specifically praise the soundtrack as one of the game's strongest features, and maybe 2% criticize the soundtrack.

(2) I think the animation explanation is sort of a "we're tired of just saying we like it that way, so here's a practical reason" excuse. The bottom line is that Vic loves the old school look and always wanted the game that way. Your view that there's a disconnect between the sinuous visuals and the chunky pixels isn't a crazy one -- I expressed it once myself -- but it's not Vic's view. He really did always want the game at this resolution. Even if we could've done it higher, I'm not sure he would've wanted to. I get the sense he views his pixels the way a master mosaicist views his tesserae. If a fresco painter said, "But it could be so much smoother!" the mosaicist would scoff.

(3) While the contract we have with WEG would certainly permit a "developer's cut," I'm not sure what one would be. Vic's got a very forward-looking attitude, so I think it would be unlikely for him to take the time to assemble and polish all the cut content, regather the VO crew, record the missing VO, etc., which would essentially require weeks if not months of working on a game he's already done with. I'm more backward-oriented, but the gap between my vision and where the game is happens to be much smaller. I'd probably put back in a cut puzzle, fix the missing audio and crappy timing in the Clarity vs. Scraper cutscene, and maybe throw in a few more custom animations here and there. Much of that may actually happen in a future patch.

(4) All of the endings were exactly what I wanted. I'm curious which ones you think are false / out of tone!

 

[ghostdog]

Primordia felt like a complete experience to me. Sure, it could use a little polish in some sections, but I never felt like something of importance was missing.

My only slight gripe was with Memorious. I wanted to be able to read much more stuff from his database. To find a larger data-bank with the lore surrounding the setting and more secrets that could be accessed if you searched for the right thing.

But that's just me. For instance I loved the extensive database of the Jordan AI in Snatcher:

 

[MRY]

Too bad you weren't a tester. I solicited additional kiosk topics from testers -- my plan was that I would keep adding them until they ran out of topics they were curious about. But no one had any suggestions. :/ If you come up with a list of topics you'd have inquired about, I'll try to add them in the next patch.

 

[ghostdog]

Too bad you weren't a tester. I solicited additional kiosk topics from testers -- my plan was that I would keep adding them until they ran out of topics they were curious about. But no one had any suggestions. :/ If you come up with a list of topics you'd have inquired about, I'll try to add them in the next patch.

Since I played the game several months ago, I can't give you very specific suggestions. In general I'd have liked more info about the war, the before the war society and the years right after the war. A more fleshed out lore of the world and setting, if you may. Also more specific info on individuals, both humans and robots that played some big part. And hints that would connect present characters --and your character-- to such events and persons. Stuff like that. Also it would be nice if you could actually type your queries to memorious.

 

[MRY]

Fair enough. It's hard for me to come up with the topics int he abstract because of the need to strike a balance between maintaining an air of mystery about the world and providing players with what they want to know. But I'll give it a look.

 

[MRY]

Citizens of RPG Codex: We have something new coming your way. Since it's not a game, I didn't feel like I could in good conscience start a new thread. You can read more about it on our Facebook page. I find social media baffling and off-putting, but it appears to be a very important part of developing independent games (or any games) these days, so alas we're going to be using Facebook for the initial distribution.

For those whose view of Primordia was "Awesome, except for the zany humor," rest assured, this is relentless melancholy and futile hope unbroken by a single Jay-Z reference.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Whatever that is I'll be sure to check it out. Just pretty please don't make me create a FB account.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Primordia: Origins DLC, huh?

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Primordia: Origins DLC, huh?

Nah, a facebook game where you gather junk and making robots and buildings