Editorial RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2015 - SpellForce 3, ELEX, D:OS EE, The Guild 3, Daedalic and more

[Bumvelcrow]

You're broken.

It's been pointed out. I prefered Risen (the original) to Gothic 2. Now tell me how broken I am.

Something about the Gothic world just annoys me. It's too simplistic - too dull, with nothing much interesting happening. The character interactions are stilted, the combat is frustrating. It feels like it should be better and I should be enjoying it, but it's like Terry Brooks doing an authorised sequel to Lord of the Rings. It's a watered down version of what I think it should be.

Edit: Maybe you have to be German...

 

[Grotesque]

Now tell me how broken I am.

beyond repair

It's too simplistic - too dull, with nothing much interesting happening

You smoke too much swapweed

the combat is frustrating

the combat is where Gothic 1 shines because if you use the mindless button smashing, you get your ass kicked in no time. You actually have to use your brain and having sharp reflexes sure helps also. (reflexes in an RPG????? that's not an Rrr PEE GieeE)

Gothic 1 having only keyboards controls was a blessing for combat.
If memory serves me right, there was no mouse support because Gothic was to come for consoles only.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Spotted a typo : "The Amplitude staff seemed determined to be the perfects hosts, and they were succeeding."

 

[HobGoblin42]

Gothic 1 having only keyboards controls was a blessing for combat.
If memory serves me right, there was no mouse support because Gothic was to come for consoles only.

Nope, Gothic 1also had mouse controls, but the whole control setup was a mess. I remember that I had to use the CNTRL keys for almost any action somehow, especially for the inventory. For its combat, I would prefer the controls of 'Severance - Blade of Darkness' which had been released in the same year as G1.

 

[Plane Escapee]

Please give Bubbles more content work for the codex. I suggest giving him the responsibility of reviewing Fallout 4.

 

[MicoSelva]

Spellforce 3 seems like a mess. Why does it even have '3" in the title if it is a prequel? (Sorry for making an assumption anyone cares about Spellforce continuity.) And the whole game looks tad too amibitious in every aspect, so I predict many features being cut or simplified before release, or extreme bugginess (or both).

If it works, it could be a good game, though, which would be a first for the series, as both SF1 and SF2 were, let us say, severy lacking in quality.

Daedalic's decline was really sad to read about.

I do not have high hopes for ELEX, but I only played the good PB games (G1, G2, Risen), so I am willing to give it a shot.

LoL @ Syberia 3. To be a good game it needs to be nothing like Syberia 1&2 (which were the most boring adventure games I had the displeasure of playing/watching on YT), but then it will get slaughtered by exisiting fans of the series. So it is a lose-lose situation.

Thanks for all the effort, Bubbles .

 

[Stompa]

Yeah, I can't muster any excitement over Spellforce 3. Low amount of factions, generic as hell classes (where's muh mentalist, damnit?), heroes taking a backseat in army-on-army combat, "just like Game of Thrones".

 

[Grauken]

Never could muster enthusiasm for any of these hybrids, I rather play a pure variant of either genre than any of these Frankensteinian monsters

 

[Bubbles]

Weirdly, the Spellforce interview seems to have attracted the most off-site interest so far. I guess you can never predict what people may latch on to.

http://forum.spellforce.com/showthread.php?p=834206#post834206

http://forum.spellforce.com/showthread.php?p=834207#post834207

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

That reviewer, or whatever you may call his role, certainly did give an effort to deliver his negative impression about the game. The very first sentence of the review: "My first sort-of-RPG of the day comes from a long and boring lineage.", I mean really? Did he had to write it in this kind of way? I find that a tad disrespectful towards the developers and the series itself. Makes me think that he obviously did not play or even gave the series a chance. His personal paragraphs are full of this negative attitude. A review like this can't be 100% objective and shouldn't be, but doing it this way is hardly appropriate or professional

.

 

[Excidium II]

Bubbles doing his part to keep the fire burning

 

[Infinitron]

People need to look up what "review" means.

(Ironically, in an actual Bubbles review, he would never be so blunt.)

 

[Grotesque]

I suggest giving him the responsibility of reviewing Fallout 4

NO!

"That reviewer, or whatever you may call his role, certainly did give an effort to deliver his negative impression about the game. The very first sentence of the review: "My first sort-of-RPG of the day comes from a long and boring lineage.", I mean really? Did he had to write it in this kind of way? I find that a tad disrespectful towards the developers and the series itself. Makes me think that he obviously did not play or even gave the series a chance. His personal paragraphs are full of this negative attitude. A review like this can't be 100% objective and shouldn't be, but doing it this way is hardly appropriate or professional" - Nyralim

See? Not professional enough.

Anyway. The honor should be given to Vault Dweller in the hope of making archenemies in the gaming industry for not releasing Age of Decadence on a Thursday.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Elex looks like it will be another PB train wreck, I'm with the writer on the question of why some codex continue to give these fuckers are attention at all.

 

[santino27]

All distracting and disruptive elements – otherwise referred to as "gameplay" – have been filed down to a minimum.

Finally, a developer who understands the masses don't actually want any gameplay in their games.

Looking forward to part 4 of the report!

 

[JustMyOnion]

I'm not sure what the author is on about regarding The Guild - nothing about it was 2D, the closest to that were the interiors with their fixed camera angles. And the screenshots of The Guild 3 do look a lot gloomier than 2 - although then again, that was a Gamebryo game with bloom levels set to Oblivion.

 

[Bubbles]

I'm not sure what the author is on about regarding The Guild - nothing about it was 2D, the closest to that were the interiors with their fixed camera angles.

These screengrabs from youtube are horribly blurry, but they illustrate what I mean:

Guild 1 start screen map:

Guild 2 start screen map:

Guild 1 chargen:

Guild 2 chargen:

Guild 1 town map:

Guild 2 town map:

The Guild 1 map wasn't great looking, but at least it had some style. The Guild 2 chargen map is a tiny window in a huge screen.
Guild 1 chargen made an effort to be ~immersive~ in its limited way, Guild 2 chargen gives no fucks.
As for the town screen maps, well, I hope you can tell.

 

[twincast]

Never really felt motivated to try out any version of The Guild (although I do think I actually bought one or more of them on a whim during some sale), but while the second game's lazy presentation is obviously severely lacking in atmosphere all around, one thing (naturally) particularly sticks out to me like a sore thumb:

Guild 2 start screen map:

Devs cannot into geography? Glaring complete lack of Alps and Danube--never mind smaller geographical features--aside, not even the relative position of the three places is approximated to any reasonable degree! (Yes, Linz and Pressburg are--broadly speaking--NW and SE, respectively, of Vienna, but in both cases--especially the former--the latitudinal difference is only a fraction of the longitudinal one, and the distance Linz-Vienna (~180 km) is more than twice that of Vienna-Pressburg (~80 km).) I'm pretty sure there were many more starting areas; I presume they're all equally retarded in their forced symmetry.

 

[JustMyOnion]

You're right, The Guild 1 has a lot more style regarding those things. Honestly though, I was more focused on how terrible the execution of The Guild 2's actual gameplay was. Characters that simply forget your last command, need you to click multiple times on a building to enter it (through a wall), animations where speaking looks like chewing and running looks like multiplayer lag. I also think I was beaten to death right on the marketplace in broad daylight without the guards interfering. And then they had this fantastic idea where a round/day would be 4 years instead of just 1 so your character dies after 10 days. Bad UI was probably the least of my worries.

 

[Name]

A while ago, I heard on Codex that Daedalic's owner/parent, a book publisher, decides that they are not earning enough for their 2D adventure games. That's the portent of the decline.

I hope if Silent hits with mainstream, as a Christmas miracle Daedalic will keep producing one side 2D project each year e.g. Anna's Quest, The Devil's Men.

If Silent fails, pretty sure Daedalic is going to tank.

 

[Bubbles]

side 2D project... The Devil's Men.

TDM is supposed to have 2D characters in 3D environments. Same projection technology as Silence, I believe.

 

[commie]

NO!

"That reviewer, or whatever you may call his role, certainly did give an effort to deliver his negative impression about the game. The very first sentence of the review: "My first sort-of-RPG of the day comes from a long and boring lineage.", I mean really? Did he had to write it in this kind of way? I find that a tad disrespectful towards the developers and the series itself. Makes me think that he obviously did not play or even gave the series a chance. His personal paragraphs are full of this negative attitude. A review like this can't be 100% objective and shouldn't be, but doing it this way is hardly appropriate or professional" - Nyralim

See? Not professional enough.

Anyway. The honor should be given to Vault Dweller in the hope of making archenemies in the gaming industry for not releasing Age of Decadence on a Thursday.

Eh feel pity for Bubbles. It's hard for him being an Ubermensch and watching the Master Race churn out mediocre shovelware from booth to booth while across the Oder the Slavic subhumans approch 10 million sales for GOTC Witcher III. After this there's only the rapid decline into becoming an Islamic Caliphate to look forward to as well.

 

[A user named cat]

As well as re-announcing Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, Daedalic have taken to Gamescom to confirm that they'll be releasing their PC and Mac adventure The Devil's Men on Xbox One.

The Devil's Men is a point and click adventure starring 20-year-old Adelaide Spektor, the estranged daughter of detective Karol Spektor. She lives in a small seaside town that has recently seen a spate of murders that all trace back to one place - the exhibition grounds. After being a witness at the murder of one of her father's friends, she sets out to find Karol and get to the bottom of things.

There's no word on when The Devil's Men will make the jump to Xbox One, but it's on the way and we'll look to get more information for you just as soon as we can.

http://www.purexbox.com/news/2015/08/gamescom_2015_the_devils_men_confirmed_for_xbox_one

Whatever the case may be with Daedalic, I personally think it's great someone is doing something with Pillars of the Earth. Consoleamole or not. Really liked the novel, even the sequel, plus the mini-series they spawned (Ian Mcshane was fantastic as always). I'm curious how it'll be adapted into a game though. Had no idea another book was in the works too, awesome.

 

[CptMace]

Never really enjoyed Amplitude's 4X that much, their art direction is fine but damn the gameplay gets quickly boring.
I do love their roguelike with a passion though, actually challenging with little bullshit on the way. Would rather see a dote2 than a el2 in the future

 

[Plane Escapee]

NO!

"That reviewer, or whatever you may call his role, certainly did give an effort to deliver his negative impression about the game. The very first sentence of the review: "My first sort-of-RPG of the day comes from a long and boring lineage.", I mean really? Did he had to write it in this kind of way? I find that a tad disrespectful towards the developers and the series itself. Makes me think that he obviously did not play or even gave the series a chance. His personal paragraphs are full of this negative attitude. A review like this can't be 100% objective and shouldn't be, but doing it this way is hardly appropriate or professional" - Nyralim

See? Not professional enough.

Anyway. The honor should be given to Vault Dweller in the hope of making archenemies in the gaming industry for not releasing Age of Decadence on a Thursday.

I have nothing against a Vault Dweller review. Though through my years of lurking, I was under the impression he was being phased out. Bubbles is the best alternative. Perhaps even better for a game review that (probably) does not allow for a great depth of systems and/or tactical combat review (meaning: I think Vault Dweller would be less motivated to write an entertaining or detailed enough review of Fallout 4 based on something from out of my ass*).

*I've found that things I pull out of my ass are often reliable