Seven: The Days Long Gone - Thief-inspired isometric action-RPG from former CD Projekt devs

[ArchAngel]

Sorry to commit the dreadful faux pas of double posting, but I just wanted to share some initial impressions and say that I've been having a great time with this game in the 5 hours played so far. I've been particularly enthused about the freedom of movement and easily navigated verticality. I never expected the game to control as nicely as it does. The setting has been another pleasant surprise, as it seems to be an interesting and unique take on cyberpunk. Combat can be clunky, but I haven't had any serious problems with it yet.

Feels really nice to be playing a decently competent stealth game from an overhead view with some nice RPG elements implemented. I'm reminded of Shadow Tactics in a very good way (though ST is clearly superior in terms of stealth gameplay). The majority of the backlash the game has received seems to be due to the buggy release, and rightfully so in a number of cases. It also seems that a lot of people weren't really sure what they should be expecting when they bought it. While there are different play styles approaches offered, it seems at its core a stealth game, and the protagonist is most certainly a "thief."

I get the feeling that a number of gameplay flaws will rear their head at some point, but I don't think they will strip the sense of appreciation I have for this game, particularly as a studio's first foray.

While it was this studio first foray, some of its devs are Witcher veterans and I am sure they hired other veterans as well.

 

[Jinn]

While it was this studio first foray, some of its devs are Witcher veterans and I am sure they hired other veterans as well.

This is true, but there has to be a difference between working within a large team and becoming leaders of your own small studio. I'm willing to cut some slack to a former quest designer who becomes a Project Lead for the first time in his life, for example. I'm not suggesting everyone should do the same, but I think it's worth considering that just because someone is a veteran within the industry doesn't mean they are instantly proficient at all roles within it.

 

[Alienman]

How does the game run for you? If I have shadows on I get some serious FPS drops. I also get stuttering while moving around quickly. Otherwise it run at 60 FPS.

 

[Jinn]

How does the game run for you? If I have shadows on I get some serious FPS drops. I also get stuttering while moving around quickly. Otherwise it run at 60 FPS.

Yeah, it's pretty close to the same for me. Definitely worse in the first big town in Peh than anywhere else. The game does need an optimization patch, which they say they are working on now.

 

[circ]

i saw this on youtub a few weeks ago. seemed like a hack and slashy number in isometria. Can you play as grill?

 

[Jinn]

seemed like a hack and slashy number in isometria.

I'm sure you could play it that way, but I haven't been doing much hacking and slashing myself. Game is really fun played as a stealth experience where combat is not the ultimate goal.

Can you play as grill?

No.

 

[circ]

No.

girls rule women are funny. get over it.

 

[Jinn]

I thought I would post my brief Steam review/impressions here for anyone who has been interested in this at all:

____________

Really glad to have given this game a chance. Love the blend of isometric action rpg gameplay with competently executed stealth elements. Makes for a very unique experience. Quick list of positive aspects so far:

-Great controls - way better than I imagined would have been possible. Very easy to move around and has nice, intuitive use of verticality.

-Fun stealth, with a couple highlights being the use of disguises and an interesting approach to real-time/pause elements with mechanics such as lockpicking, hacking, pickpocketing, and looting.

-Large and beautiful world with a great deal to discover. Exploration has been nicely rewarding so far. On the same note, while there is a mini-map, it's rare that a quest will be as simple as walking to the highlighted area or marker on the map. Really appreciate that.

-An XP-less character progression system. Normally I would prefer one, but it makes complete sense to tie progression to equipment/skill chip upgrades because this not only discourages a pure combat mindset (this is a stealth game at heart) but also encourages exploration.

-Itemization, while bogged down by "junk" collection for the crafting system, is still quite nice when it comes to things like weapons, armor, and skills.

-Really enjoy the setting. A fresh take on cyberpunk that turned out remarkably well. Characters have been likeable so far, particularly the experienced protagonist Teriel and his daemon passenger. Really hope to see this world used and fleshed out in future projects.

-Main quests seem good so far, and side quests have also been fun despite being fairly standard fetch-quests (as of 8 hours in). Despite the item-acquiring nature of the side quests, the nature of the gameplay generally allows for a number of different approaches.

Overall I feel its negative reception so far has been mainly due to two things: an unfortunately buggy release (which has largely been remedied) and the uncertain expectation of what kind of game it was going to be by many who played it without much prior experience with the stealth genre. Regardless, I'm glad that this game exists and have been having an excellent time playing it. Would highly recommend to anyone willing to try something a little different.

____________

Ultimately I think this game deserves more attention than it's received. It's a step in the right direction and I can't wait to see what other projects this team comes up with in the future. Like I mentioned in the review, would really love to see them continue exploring this world they've created.

I've even been getting some Gothic series vibes off it, particularly when it comes to how greatly character progression is tied to equipment. Very exciting!

 

[Rahdulan]

Well, I took the plunge and bought the game but I guess I'll hold off for a while if they're still patching. I agree with Jinn, though:

uncertain expectation of what kind of game it was going to be

I still frankly am not sure what exactly I bought, but let it never be said that Codex cannot sway one's opinion with incline.

 

[ArchAngel]

Well, I took the plunge and bought the game but I guess I'll hold off for a while if they're still patching. I agree with Jinn, though:

uncertain expectation of what kind of game it was going to be

I still frankly am not sure what exactly I bought, but let it never be said that Codex cannot sway one's opinion with incline.

You bought a fun stealth focused action RPG set in a semi open world setting that is in this game focused on one (prisoner) Island.

It would be fun to see how this game works in a larger more open setting with multiple settlements and everything in between.

 

[Heretic]

Whoa, already 50% off?
https://www.dlgamer.com/us/games/buy-seven-the-days-long-gone-45338

Can't be bought from Europe. :-/

 

[LESS T_T]

They released demo on Steam and GOG.

We are happy to announce the release of Seven: The Days Long Gone Demo, that includes the entire prologue level in which players can experience the most important gameplay aspects: fighting, magic, sneaking and disguises.

 

[Zombra]

Demo took about 45 minutes, definitely left me hungry for more. On my short list for "next to buy". Sorry ELEX.

 

[zool]

Demo took about 45 minutes, definitely left me hungry for more. On my short list for "next to buy". Sorry ELEX.

It's currently on sale on GOG (-30%) if you're interested.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Demo took about 45 minutes, definitely left me hungry for more. On my short list for "next to buy". Sorry ELEX.

Tried the demo. the controls felt a little cumbersome, but I got used to it after sometime. Also, I tried to bind the world-map button to "Tab" but "tab" works as "esc" key.

Being used to Thief series and wanting to knock down guards, i was a bit disappointed, cause it doesn't quite work because knocking guards out is time limited like in metal gear series, with the "Zzz..." icon above the guards' head. You can disguise yourself though.

I don't know if different play-styles has any influence in the story/end/dialogue.

 

[Zombra]

Being used to Thief series and wanting to knock down guards, i was a bit disappointed, cause it doesn't quite work because knocking guards out is time limited like in metal gear series, with the "Zzz..." icon above the guards' head. You can disguise yourself though.

Nice. I forgot I could knock out guys, I just killed 2 or 3 and was like, "I guess this is the world I live in." Whoops

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Being used to Thief series and wanting to knock down guards, i was a bit disappointed, cause it doesn't quite work because knocking guards out is time limited like in metal gear series, with the "Zzz..." icon above the guards' head. You can disguise yourself though.

Nice. I forgot I could knock out guys, I just killed 2 or 3 and was like, "I guess this is the world I live in." Whoops

The thing I dislike is that they wake up naked (since you can steal their clothes), but resume their patrol with no consequence whatsoever.

 

[ArchAngel]

Being used to Thief series and wanting to knock down guards, i was a bit disappointed, cause it doesn't quite work because knocking guards out is time limited like in metal gear series, with the "Zzz..." icon above the guards' head. You can disguise yourself though.

Nice. I forgot I could knock out guys, I just killed 2 or 3 and was like, "I guess this is the world I live in." Whoops

The thing I dislike is that they wake up naked (since you can steal their clothes), but resume their patrol with no consequence whatsoever.

Wouldn't being knocked out and resuming patrol with or without clothes with no consequence already be a bigger problem?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Being used to Thief series and wanting to knock down guards, i was a bit disappointed, cause it doesn't quite work because knocking guards out is time limited like in metal gear series, with the "Zzz..." icon above the guards' head. You can disguise yourself though.

Nice. I forgot I could knock out guys, I just killed 2 or 3 and was like, "I guess this is the world I live in." Whoops

The thing I dislike is that they wake up naked (since you can steal their clothes), but resume their patrol with no consequence whatsoever.

Wouldn't being knocked out and resuming patrol with or without clothes with no consequence already be a bigger problem?

Actually, my point is that being naked makes this thing even more ridiculous. But what bothers me is that they resume patrol after waking up as if nothing have happened. If that is s the case, it would be better if they stood knocked out indefinetly. Also, I didn't kill anyone. I don't know if it's possible to drag bodies around. Knocked out people can't be dragged.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...an_isometric_RPG_Seven_The_Days_Long_Gone.php

Making 3D climbing work in an isometric RPG: Seven: The Days Long Gone



Isometric role-playing games have long been a strong format for exploring interesting storytelling ideas and fascinating tabletop game mechanics.

In the last few years, a number of notable developers have returned to the genre. Last December, Polish game dev Fool's Theory and publisher IMGN.PRO teamed up to release Seven: The Days Long Gone, a new entry in the genre that focuses on stealth and, remarkably,, 3D platforming.

When we decided to stream Seven last month, we did so because we felt it was notable that a developer was pushing some of the genre's technological boundaries, creating more wide-open spaces and multiple terrain levels for players to navigate.

You can watch the full hour-long stream above, in which Fool's Theory project lead Jakub Rokosz and world and story designer Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz join us to discuss the game's technical achievements, as well as its design and story conceits as well.

To help other developers better understand how the game works, and what challenges the team faced in creating an isometric stealth RPG in which the character can shimmy off balconies or scale cliffs, we've transcribed some useful parts of that conversation below.

Stream Participants:

Bryant Francis, Editor at Gamasutra
Alex Wawro, Editor at Gamasutra
Jakub Rokosz, Project lead of Seven: The Days Long Gone at Fool's Theory
Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz, World and story designer of Seven: The Days Long Gone at Fool's Theory

Indie production insight
Wawro: It seems ambitious for a small team to jump right into games with a sort of traditional asymmetric-esque CRPG; this seems like a lot to tackle, although obviously your experiences with CD Projekt informs your work on this, I'm sure. Why did this particular project seem like such a good idea for you, your first time out?

Kuzia-Rokosz: If you think about it from the practical side, [the gap between some big ideas and what we can do is large]. So, first of all, we have a small team so first-person is really out of our reach for now, for such a small team. On the other hand, we still wanted to make something innovative, so like an isometric RPG or other game seemed like a good way to start.

Rokosz: It's a good way to start, I was thinking at length about it, about what we should do for our first project, and I always loved and wanted to do an RPG. What happened was, I started calculating how many people you needed for the back end, to do stuff of the proper quality level. It turned out that I don't have that much money, and I don't know anyone who does! (laughs)

So we could either crunch like crazy, or we could have only seniors in our team and crunch like crazy, or we would have to do something different, in a different approach. So we decided on an isometric point of view, not just because it was easier -- it wasn't actually easier because we had the other problems with the camera and perspective and combat, etc. -- but it kind of took some problems out of our way at the start, so we didn't need any people in the cinematic department, so we didn't have to do film-esque cutscenes, or facial animations, or rigging all the fingers and stuff. That takes some workload off of our animators and stuff.

So it's definitely easier to do this kind of game in a smaller team. The other thing was that, when we were doing Seven, it turned out we knew that we were going to need people who were multi-instrumentalists, so they could do anything and everything. So oftentimes it would be one person in our team would do three or four departments at the same time and juggle tasks.

Managing a complicated game camera in a multi-level world
Wawro: What is the rule you use for how to clip away objects in terms of where the camera rotates, and how do you decide which thing to clip away, and when?

Rokosz: Basically, in our game all the environments are done from modules. So there are little breaks that construct the whole map. Our lead programmer, Łukasz Królikowski, was working hard and delivering this feature where basically he has numerous traces from the camera to the player which gather all the objects that could get in the way, and then... I hope I am not making this stuff up! You can follow it up with Lukasz after this stream. But I think he's dynamically doing material replacement with those objects, replacing them in real-time basically. I hope Lukasz answers your question because this is basically a custom-built system that our programmer did.

Francis: It is really cool, I was struck by, in a player's sense, I'm overwhelmed with it in this town just now, how there's so much to do in this one area. Unlike other CRPGs, like verticality here becomes not just a sloping of a 2D space, but it exists in a very big way. Like, right now I'm sitting in the middle of three levels. And of course I can climb on top of things and jump over things.

Wawro: Yeah. This is running on Unreal Engine 4. Let's talk about the challenges you face in trying to make this isometric RPG on Unreal 4 where the character isn't stuck to the ground. One of the most striking things that we'll see is that he keeps climbing over things, sliding off things. That's fascinating. How did you do that? What challenges did you face?

Rokosz: Of the challenges that we encountered, the biggest challenge was how we handled navmesh. All of those objects have edges generated with on them with links and stuff like that, so it had to be generated, and at some point when we started to do our prototypes, we discovered that there is actually a limit of those edges that you can have streamed at the same time. So we had to do a little bit of tweaking to the engine.

I don't know if it had this feature right now, since we're on a fairly old Unreal engine version. We're going to be upgrading soon. But we had to do our custom system which would stream, which would first cut the navmesh into grids, and then it would stream the grids as you progress through the map. The same would go with streaming geometry, just simply cutting the geometry by hand on a level just wasn't cutting it, so we had to design and implement a special system that would take our geometry and take a snapshot of it cut into pieces, and then stream those pieces instead of regular geometry. Those were bigger issues for the early end of development, at the year mark.

Then we started having problems with AIs, like chokepoints on too many AIs streamed. Which is kind of the situations where you can see that the most is exactly the moment you can see the big backdrop at the end where you can see all the levels, and all the monsters and NPCs on those levels, and sometimes you get into having 500 AIs at the same time on the screen. Even though you don't see them because they're small, they're still there.

Implementing the Techno Eye

Francis: Let's talk about "Techno Eye" feature that you've implemented. For those of you watching at home, I'm holding down the "Q" button and moving the mouse around, and it gives me an overlay of information about the world around me. Can you talk about the process of implementing that kind of feature, and why do you think RPGs benefit from giving the player special vision, if you will.

Rokosz: The main reason that we did this was because of the perspective. The perspective is fine in looking into this [area], but it doesn't give you a good view of the area you're about to explore and infiltrate. So in the sneaking game, that's a big handicap. You have to give the player some way to counter it.

So the sense mode where you can pan the camera like 1.5 screens left, right, up or down so you can have a quick look around. Also for us, it gives us the opportunity to not fill the screen with too much information in the UI, because usually you would have information about how strong the enemy is, what the difficulty is, how much HP he has, etc., where here you have a prompt that we just saw.

And you can upgrade that prompt, we don't give you the full set of information on the spot, for the player who's not really interested in it, he doesn't need to upgrade it with passives. But there are some upgrades that you can implement that give you special abilities. Like, insight into NPC statistics, their pockets, how wealthy, what challenge they pose, etc.

Wawro: I think that's really interesting, when you see systems like that in games, just sort of like super-vision systems where the player can easily hit a button or a toggle and look for clues or data they need to know, sometimes it can be hard to keep the player from just keeping that on all the time.

I remember that in the Arkham games, it was very common to have Batman with his Detective Vision on all the time, just so you know where everything was, and could see all the enemies. Was that a challenge that you faced in designing this, and if so how did you deal with the fact that it's so easy for players just to leave that on all the time?

Rokosz: That was one of the ideas we had at the beginning, why not just give a toggle button for it and be done with it? But then I definitely felt, well it's rather pointless, at the same time you could just leave it on and everybody will be running around with it and have a huge disc around them with all the containers lit up and all the enemies visible and stuff like that. This is like that part of the mechanic, of actually going into the sense mode and stopping for a second from running like crazy, and having a breather and looking around and thinking, what now? Where can I go? What can I see? This is the gamification of Teriel looking around, basically.

Kuzia-Rokosz: We tried the approach with everything enabled, so you could see every view-cone of the NPCs, which was so unclear. So now you can see view-cone of the character you click on.

 

[toro]

Bought it and refund it after 1 hour.

- Left click is attack and there is no way someone will not miss-click by accident and then start a fight,
- You always have to press ESC/Space when ending conversations or simply loot things with E,
- Equipping armor is PITA, not to mention the radial action menu which is simply retarded,
- Huge amounts of garbage loot, but I got hunter armor and pistols in like the first 20 minutes of the game,
- Bad VO and dialogues and to be honest ... the start of the story is not great at all,
- The AI seems to be broken (no surprise): you can leave corpses around and nobody cares,
- Awful camera which destroy any exploration enjoyment: the architecture popping is unbearable.

I don't know what other people smoked but this is one shitty game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I was skeptical of this since the first time I saw the desperate Thief name-dropping. Sometimes I am right.

 

[Zombra]

I only got a few hours in before getting distracted by Subnautica but I like this game and intend to get back to it sometime soon. Definitely some rough edges but pretty monocoled imo.

 

[Paul_cz]

I feel kinda bad for the devs. Left CDP to make their own fairly innovative mix between RPG and stealth game, and apparently it is a total bust when it comes to sales.

 

[Heretic]

To be blunt: They should have made a better game. Innovation is not valuable in itself.