Ardenfall - an indie open world RPG inspired by Morrowind and New Vegas

[agris]

meh, cut em some slack. they’re barely not-kids, and functionally grew up online. plus kid in middle looks normal.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I dont mind low poly, but the no texture stock 3d model rarely works. I'd rather them emulating older game look like dread delusion or lunacid or gloomwood.

 

[Hace El Oso]

They’re looking for a shortcut, older games took good work to look like they did. I’ll quote this post again:

"a throw back to old top-down retro soccer games of the 90's"

*spend much less pixels per character than MicroProse Soccer.*

This is exactly like that indie pixel art meme.

 

[luj1]

Sensible Soccer was the best

 

[luj1]

Anyway its cool this game is inspired by Morrowind but the visual presentation is on the level of Redaxium

 

[HoboForEternity]

I legit think it would look decent if they just use texture. The only game that works using that kind of low poly style that i played is ice pick lodge's know by heart.

 

[user]

The low poly style will stay but the rest are obviously placeholders people, just look at the UI, it's practically wireframed.
Right...?

 

[unseeingeye]

It looks to me like they are recreating all of the most mundane and banal aspects of Morrowind, yet the impression I am getting is that the writing and world building isn't going to be nearly as interesting. I never cared very much about Morrowind as a setting; the giant mushrooms and tels, the weird looking creatures, the "alien" landscapes and indigenous cultural designs that people can never get enough of talking about, etc. The only thing that really made the setting interesting to me in this limited sense was the amount and the diversity of the different biomes which contributed to making the island feel so much bigger than it actually is.

But ultimately what makes Morrowind the game that I sunk more hours into than any others and significantly so, is the writing and world-building. They absolutely perfected this art and brought us a world to explore that was so well realized that it felt like an actual place with thousands of years of lived-in history, with belief systems that feel as if they naturally developed over such a span of time in reaction to many events of which you can actually read about and see for yourself the consequences of on the very landscape, the way that actual environment reflects the known history as revealed in the game. Learning about how the ghost fence is maintained and why it is there in the first place, or studying the spiritual philosophy of the Buoyant Armigers and their devotion to mimicking the life experience of their living god, or encountering bizarre locations that are discussed by the residents in nearby villages or cities like the tower near Dagon Fel in which you can find Sorkvild the Raven practicing necromancy who holds the Daedric artifact Masque of Clavicus Vile, etc. You could read books about people seeking out masters for apprenticeship in each of the martial and magical arts, and then stumble on them out in the world sometimes dozens or more hours after having read about them, for instance when you read Breathing Water and later realize that the Seryne Relas just hanging out in her home within Tel Branora is the same woman mentioned in that book, and the same goes for the master training of all the other skills.

The aesthetics in the games presentation on every level are an amalgam of several different artists coming together in one of those remarkably rare instances where different styles compliment each other, a handful of utter geniuses creative imagination informed by sincere study of natural and narrative history tempered by mature and assertive experts determined to make it happen (like Rolston). It isn't enough to just make Daedric looking weapons, copy mushroom towers with Velothi lanterns hanging from the architecture built up around them, make tents with primitive people hanging around, and let you throw robes over your clothing and armor. Nearly every object in Morrowind, from the alchemical apparatus to the ingredients used like Sload Soap, to the blacksmith making Steel plate to the fashioning of leather armor from the hides of the islands floating animals, each item has both a function that is directly beneficial or harmful to the player character as well as the NPCs and enemies, but also a comprehensive background that is exposed by conversation, reading books or inference from environmental details that present visual narratives.

Where in the Bethesda and Obsidian Fallouts as well as the later Elder Scrolls games, there are loads of useless items that are placed randomly irrespective of any environmental purpose absent any signs of reasoned intention (though New Vegas at least tried to address this in Survival mode), in Morrowind there was clearly a much more concerted effort at making interactable objects and consumables in every environment appear as if they were put there by the NPCs themselves. The more the hand of the designer is present the less believable the game world becomes and this new game looks like a low resolution surface level AI scrape of Morrowind visual presentation. If they can manage to recreate some of the narrative depths that made Morrowind the masterpiece that it remains then perhaps it could be interesting, but this looks to be beyond a spiritual successor or strong influence and has approached rip-off levels of imitation, and I can only assume that the mythopoeia will be similarly derivative.

 

[Maxie]

Improvements:

• Streamlined every quest

They have walked path from Morrowind to Skyrim before even releasing the game. Good call.

i wish they were inspired by skyrim since its a decent hiking sim

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I don’t get the aesthetic. It looks like a cel-shaded game without the cel-shading part yet. Like the concept art for the food seems like maybe they want to go for some watercolor cel-shaded look like Ōkami and that new Bayonetta Origins games. Also looks like maybe they want it to look like Killer 7 and Killer is Dead and aren’t finished yet

It also looks like they’re trying to go from some kind of low poly look, but it doesn’t look as striking as something like Interstate '76 or the character models in Virtua Fighter and other early 3D fighting games.

 

[JarlFrank]

Improvements:

• Streamlined every quest

They have walked path from Morrowind to Skyrim before even releasing the game. Good call.

The devs said that the game's quests are intended to be solvable without quest markers. Every quest has proper directions given to you by NPCs, a journal entry that gives you a concise summary of what you have to do, and in dialogs the names of locations NPCs give you are even highlighted in a different color so you don't miss it.

Despite all that, zoomers who played the demo complained that they have no idea where to go because "the game doesn't tell them" (it does, there just aren't any quest markers on the screen).

So the devs begrudgingly implemented quest markers (but they're an optional feature you can switch off in the menu, as quests are still designed to be solvable without the markers).

Modern gamers are functionally retarded.

 

[Tyranicon]

Yeah this looks like it's super early in its infancy so I wouldn't judge it too harshly. They have a bunch of people on their dev staff page, maybe one of these days they'll add some art people and it'll look good.

Graphics market your game better than any person can. Better graphics = mo' money.

 

[Justinian]

Gave the demo a spin. Combat feels better than morrowind but it's also even more simple. I don't like the art style but i can put up with it if the gameplay has some meat to it. Lack of attack variety was always a big drawback of elder scrolls games and this game doesn't even have the directional attacks gimmick, just swing and swing harder.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Improvements:

• Streamlined every quest

They have walked path from Morrowind to Skyrim before even releasing the game. Good call.

The devs said that the game's quests are intended to be solvable without quest markers. Every quest has proper directions given to you by NPCs, a journal entry that gives you a concise summary of what you have to do, and in dialogs the names of locations NPCs give you are even highlighted in a different color so you don't miss it.

Despite all that, zoomers who played the demo complained that they have no idea where to go because "the game doesn't tell them" (it does, there just aren't any quest markers on the screen).

So the devs begrudgingly implemented quest markers (but they're an optional feature you can switch off in the menu, as quests are still designed to be solvable without the markers).

Modern gamers are functionally retarded.

First you get conditioned to ignore the dialogue and follow the quest markers, then you get criticized for doing exactly that.

Also the fact that markers are opt out rather than opt in means that majority will start using it and the game won't decondition them.

 

[luj1]

I don’t get the aesthetic.

Placeholder aesthetic

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There was this game in the old days... I think it was called Another World. This one's graphics have similiar vibe and it was a nice game overall. I won't judge book by it's cover.

The low-polygon 3D aesthetic adopted by a number of recent indie games bears no comparison with the beautiful Amiga graphics of Another World.

 

[Tacgnol]

Also the fact that markers are opt out rather than opt in means that majority will start using it and the game won't decondition them.

Sadly, many modern players are too retarded to check option menus so will just bitch the game is too hard and instant-refund.

Not saying it's a good choice, but I can understand why they are doing it that way.

 

[Hace El Oso]

RPGs now attract probably the dumbest, laziest subset of people who play PC games. Dedicated tactical/strategy games (no nuParadox RPG elements garbage) and sims are the only genres you can make adult games for without having to be an artiste who refuses to compromise his vision like Kurvitz. A test that these dorky kids will absolutely never pass.

 

[Tyranicon]

RPGs now attract probably the dumbest, laziest subset of people who play PC games. Dedicated tactical/strategy games (no nuParadox RPG elements garbage) and sims are the only genres you can make adult games for without having to be an artiste who refuses to compromise his vision like Kurvitz. A test that these dorky kids will absolutely never pass.

The solution for this has existed since time immemorial. give them an easy mode that doesn't any offer any challenge whatsoever. You can even troll players by calling it baby mode or anything you'd like.

 

[luj1]

There was this game in the old days... I think it was called Another World. This one's graphics have similiar vibe

No it doesnt

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[luj1]

Gave the demo a spin

TLDR decent little Morrowind-lite and conceptually I very much like the game, however,

- needs way more manually placed statics and secrets
- combat feels rough
- something wrong with the color palette (environment kinda blends in due to too much green everywhere?)
- I don't mind the presentation, but please make enemies more interesting/dangerous. They are basically teletubbies in slow motion
- please do everyone a favor and just nuke fatigue
- for the love of god do some work on the UI. This game desperately lacks soul, it looks like an android game. You need way more 2D art in the UI

 

[adegron]

Enemy bullets look awful, enemy movement could be better. Everything else is fine.

Saw some inspiration from Yakuza, Zelda, and the world looks like Okami. Outside world looks awesome. I don't mind paying more for this game if it comes out good.

Hopefully it will be finished.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

This is really promising. How much content is there in the demo? Should i play along as it updates or wait for full release next decade?

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Hope they doing something about those bland, flat-color graphics. Also swear to fuck "Ardenfall" is the name of some random dime-a-thousand RPGmaker Steam game.

That aside I'm a lil interested.

That's Arafell. What you can't tell the difference?