I'm jaded, but this game might be sick #madewithunity

Not only is it great looking with a nintendo influenced style, but in the later part they really talk about the AI and dynamic nature of the game. Apparently they're trying to really build a game world that adapts and changes meaningfully to player.

It might not live up to the goals, but if it comes close it'll be pretty sick.

They're up on kickstarter but they've already won unity awards, square enix collective, etc, and seem to have a very solid foundation in place.

 

Love the style! Nice character work.

 

In the later part?

There's no developer commentary there.

 

Whups! Fixed the video, had linked to the wrong one.

Here's the kickstarter page proper: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/twirlbound/pine-an-action-adventure-game-that-adapts-to-you

 

Lots of kind of vague statements like "the game world responding to the player" that aren't really broken down (though I can't say they're expected to explain it all, just something I would want).

Additionally..."what if an elephant had to be fast?" Well...it would no longer be an elephant. It certainly wouldn't just walk on two feet while keeping a trunk and tusks (with opposable thumbs, there's no need for the trunk at all--and they'd break their legs if they walked around like that, unless the legs were way more massive). That's just not how biology works. Creatures are built the way they are for a reason. Elephants are designed, if you will, the way they are to fill a specific niche. Other creatures fill the "fast" niche. And the premise "what if a moose needed tools to do X" is inherently flawed, at least in how I saw it played out in the gameplay (unless they've managed to conjure up a very unique and specific situation where those tools are absolutely required, which I doubt). Animals can do a powerful lot of stuff without sentient-level tools.

It seems like they're going for the fantasy sapient animals thing without any magic, which is very interesting. Additionally, this whole concept (of a living world) is something I'm captivated by so I'll be interested in seeing what happens to this.

Sadly, unless this gets a really big showing in media somewhere I'm not sure it'll make it. The majority of kickstarter support happens at the beginning of the campaign.

 

Hmm. If the game was actually like the animation at the beginning it would look awesome.
Unfortunately the actual game footage at 2:39 doesn't look as good as the animations.

A very pretty looking game which involves collecting resources and has no real story? What could possibly go wrong *cough* no man's sky *cough*.

I would like to play the game if they get it as good as the mocked up footage at the beginning but I'd have to say "I'm out" on this one.

I don't really get why they don't just make it into movie. The animations look amazing. The game... not so much.

 

A movie where you're given the choice to eradicate or uplift sapient species? I'm dubious as to whether they can do it too, but it definitely wouldn't work as a movie.

 

The way they talk about it in video doesn't remind me of Spore or No Man's Sky. They talk about it like it is a dynamic sandbox where the sand plays back with you.

Games like this that are heavily AI driven are a different beast, more like a proper simulator. Spore and No Man's Sky were about generating art and animation. This sounds more like the factions and interactions are simulation driven, more like Mount and Blade or CK2 style games.

Could still be hype and fluff, but their goal here is not Spore/No Man's Sky. There's a reason this is only a small island, and that they emphasize this.

 

It lacks climbing, ennemies lore is very limited, i don't see all game interactions that makes Zelda so great, there is no tools gameplay , no crafting, no cooking , no clothes.
Anyway this looks like another great indie game.

 

But the trailer is pretty!

(I didn't actually look at the KS site yet, I just watched the first trailer that @frosted posted)

 

It's not Zelda. They're not trying to be Zelda. From the description and the video up now in the OP, it's looking to be a completely different experience from Zelda.

frosted just mentioned a style.

 

Yep it's good indeed, but i expect much more now i have played Zelda.
1) Unique places instead of showing a bland and empty world,
2) more gameplay possibilities with interactions between player actions and all other stuff
3) The game needs some humans npc to become more interesting and less player centric

Nintendo opened a new way of deep gameplay letting the player lot of choices on how to do something, that's something some of us will expect in such open world games, only basic sword combat and hunting is not enought.

I know but it is a copy of Zelda in many ways, and after Zelda i need more deeper gameplay to be interested

 

How is affecting the fate of a species not deep gameplay? It's every bit as deep as anything in Zelda. And no, it's not a copy of Zelda just because it has a similar artstyle.

And just for the record, Zelda did nothing new, it just meshed things together well and it's Nintendo so people go crazy for it (Nintendo fans can be a bit fanatical). Can you give an example of "new deep gameplay" that BOTW invented?

For your list there (not directed at me, but whatever):

1. They haven't even shown the world. It may have that.
2. They've hinted at this, but there's no way to know until we see it.
3. They've explicitly stated that this is how it works, even more so that Zelda does. Entire cultures can (in theory) go extinct without the player's input.

 

Interesting. I hope they do awesome.
But I've learned my lesson, I don't buy anything until it's had some review time.

 

It is lot of ideas mixed together like it has never been done before and there is new things for example the ability to stop time and stock force into some physic object.
A very small example of possibilities

Anyway it's a new open world genre, from great level design to deep gameplay , lot of content, lot of hidden places , secrets and treasures everywhere. There is no open world same as this one.

 

Interesting article: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...wild-shows-nintendo-is-learning-from-pc-games

It's called systemic gameplay and it's been around for years. Anyway apologies for going on a tangent here, didn't mean to.

 

4) An extreme weapon degradation system!

They seem to be drawing inspiration from quality games, and have an interesting concept. Fable/Zelda are great visual master pieces.

It would be nice to see them give a little more attention to the creatures foot placement, especially the elephant creature with it's large feet. Cool concept and design - so far - but when noticing the large elephant creatures feet rigidly IK-ing to the upper most surface poly normal - I couldn't not see it and kept being distracted by it, and then noticed it on the moose creatures.
Both of those animal/creatures have softer, more flexible, pliable feet that conform to the non-flat ground they walk on.
Could be done with a couple extra bones in the feet that would deform them based on the ground topology, although this is something that would be considered feature creep.

 

Looks pretty, but I've seen more than one too many of these teenage fantasy stories. When is an indie going to make a solid and gritty story like MGS? Looking at the trailer for Death Stranding makes me realize how much of a lack of that kind of game there is.

Seems like the indie story arsenal swings straight from horror/zombies to uplifting fantasy.

 

Ever tried This War of Mine? Knee Deep? Undertale? They aren't Metal Gear Solid, but then they don't have naked cyborgs cartwheeling around either. Additionally, indies typically probably don't have the sheer amount of money to throw around that he does. So you're not going to get that bombast you get with Kojima.

You definitely have a point, though.

 

Watching DS trailer made me realize that Kojima does too many drugs.

I share your digress with your point though, there is a large number of games that stick way too close to the traditional paths of design and theme. However I was really impressed with how H:ZD did on this topic, they really had a nice flavor to the entire game and seeing more games branching off like that would be a nice thing.

 

What I'd like is a story where the personality of the main character is highly developed, but where it's not just goodies and baddies, or right and wrong. Sort of an anti-hero (not in some silly Dan Brown style mid-life-crisis sort of way, but like the characters in movies like blade runner or children of men). A character that manages to be very cynical and move around in a very grey world without losing what makes them sort of a symbol of hope.

I find most indie characters to be very one-dimensional. Like either they are just 'good' in a stereotypical way, or they just do random stuff like shoot things without the game making any interrogation of their motives or the dimensions of their character. And the environment usually panders to their personality traits without really testing why they deserve to be there in center stage. It's like just by putting on a hoodie and skater shoes you become someone worthy of being in a story.

Anyway of those games you mentioned, I'm not into 2D or abstract games really, can't get into them very much. Knee Deep actually looks kind of fun. Undertale is exactly not what I'm looking for in terms of what we're discussing here

Even the first metal gear game back in the 90s has a totally different atmosphere. I think the japanese influence is what made it able to move out of the traditional western black-and-white us vs. them story and into something extremely character-driven and personal, where it feels like the characters are driven almost out of pure amoral emotion and human fiber, but set against a bleak world that doesn't care about any single individual. I think it's a place where a lot of writers (not just indie ones) don't feel very comfortable because you have to make the audience care without actually making the protagonist look like a particularly good person.

Actually I think Kojima's 'drugs' are the secret sauce to really good story-writing. People like Kojima and Tarantino manage to pull out every ounce of humanity from their characters without even making them appear to be moral or categorisable as a hero or a villain. And in the end, the fact is that to an audience the ability to connect with the humanity of the characters is far more powerful than any moral connection. But I think it's very hard to do, though I wish more indies would try.

 

I agree, but I think his projects have reached terminal velocity in terms of the obscurity and eccentricity that made previous titles good and it'll start going down hill from here. I guess we'll find out in the next few years.

 

I'm looking forward to it. Sometimes I feel the same way but other times I totally 'get' the tones of his stories. There's a certain freedom of expression there that I think is very symbolic - a lot of the events, narrative, even the equipment and the way it operates reflects more about the characters than it does any sort of self-consistent realism.

 

I do agree that for the most part indie games haven't really explored this. I couldn't say why. It's possible that it's because there aren't very many well-written indie games--but if you look at it, there aren't very many well written games period. That's still something many games struggle with.

And "struggle with" may be too harsh of a word. I think some games simply choose to go for a lighter tone. It's easier to write. It's easier to sell. And I suspect it's what more people expect from games.

I'm actually not really into 2D games either, so I haven't played This War of Mine I just know a bit about it.

Have you played any Yoko Taro games?

 

But nobody took all ideas and mixed them as good as Nintendo has done.
I think we will see more of such deep gameplay from next indie games.

 

Yeah definitely there are few mainstream games like this, but you sort of expect something with more character depth from the indie scene.

PS haven't seen Yoko Taro games before, Nier looks like it might be sort of MGS-ish.

 

Nier is more personal than MGS, but does tell the same kind of story of a crapsack world with kind of crapsack heroes (who are fighting for something important to them). And in Drakengard you basically play a murderous psychopath who's fighting a greater evil. And in Drakengard 3...well, Drakengard 3 is Drakengard 3.

If you don't want to play them (I haven't played any but N: A), you might read the let's plays of this guy. Pretty entertaining and they describe the story pretty accurately.

 

@frosted had a very good post about discussing realistic environments on another thread. To paraphrase - if you create one element of a game to be ultra realistic - or in this case very true to the complexity of reality for story writing, character personality, motivation, most/all other game elements will also have to be increased in complexity/realism to deliver an even distribution across all elements of the game.
I think his post holds true to story writing as well, this would cause an indie or small indie team to over scope and never complete the game, or over design and under develop on one or more elements of the game.
Here was his post in the other thread.

 

Sure.

I'm not saying BOTW is a bad game, because I don't think that at all. I'm just saying, dismissing anything that looks remotely similar is a presumptuous stance to take.

I consider Mass Effect to be the greatest game series in all of time because of how well it reflected continuing player choice across three different games. But I play lots of other RPGs. I don't say, "does the next game in the series have plot points that require specific choices in the previous game? Does the next game have characters who only appear if you chose certain options in the previous game?" That's just silly. They're different games, trying to do different things.

I can appreciate what you (and he) are saying, but do you have an example where the intricacy of the story or plot was detrimental to a game with more simple elements elsewhere? I feel Undertale is a decent example of the opposite--where a moderately complex portrayal of characters was made against a simple backdrop (pixel graphics) and was quite successful.

 

This is a really interesting looking game, and I wish them the best.

 

Ive played Pine a few times over the past few years (In various development stages) and its easily the best and most polished student-team-started project I have ever played! The team are also a really nice bunch and very talented.

Definitely backed it on KickStarter.

 

Thats just it examples are hard to come by because games that go down this route most likely fail.
Since time is limited and I usually only play games that are moderately good, or considered great by others, I do not have a good example of this, although I would bet several failed examples can be found in sections of any game dev forum where the popular game to make is the next best MMO. Most games that suffer from a dichotomy of elements - are probably unknown failures.

I don't want to generalize but maybe this is an example - Smaller RPG games that have simple pixel art graphics similar to early Final Fantasy games have some very in depth story arcs and narrative driven gameplay. These types of games deliver a mixed message when the story is really good, and the minimalistic pixel art, with accompanying low resolution talking heads and text bubbles don't match the same complexity level of the story.

 

I'll be honest, I don't completely agree. However, I think we'll get a great case study in a year or two when FF VII Remake releases.

 

I wrote FF and Metal Gear to begin with but edited my post because they are successful games.
It would never be said about a successful game that is story driven from the start, however if there are any candidates which could possibly have needed to increase resolution of other elements of the game to match the story elements - any MGS or FF game is likely one of them.
Interestingly games in both those series OFTEN receive reactions "Ok please let me get back to game play instead of watching this long non-interactive cut scene".
Note: Ive not played through FF XV yet.

 

As a fan of XIII, I'm very, very familiar with complaints about the story getting in the way of the game (somewhat legitimately--it's like 10 hours before you can even fully use the combat system, as marvelous as it is). And while I recognize the validity of the claim, I just love that game to pieces so I don't mind the flaws.

I haven't played XV yet either (waiting for it to come to PC, Square's been teasing that for at least two years), but I didn't see too many complaints about long non-interactive cutscenes there (actually saw a few complaints about the sparsity of the story near the beginning).