General News - New Dark Eye RPGs Planned

Gamestar reports that more Dark Eye RPGs are planned.

…

Instead, Wagner came up with a new plan, which included empowering Ulisses-Verlag to develop the games themselves. This is the only way to guarantee that the necessary love and care flows into the product, which the publisher and the fan base want.

It's just that Ulisses simply can't develop any games at the moment. That should change in the next few years. That's why there is a master plan :

• The visual novel: It starts as early as May 2022, when Wolves of the Westwind , a new DSA game , will appear on Steam. Only this is a visual novel, with very little RPG content. It is a story to read and with beautiful pictures. Things that Ulisses is already good at without too much financial risk.
• An Action Game: The next project will be a standard action game for the studio to try their hand at. However, without a DSA license. Because with this brand loved by fans, according to Wagner, you only have a few shots free , and they should sit.
• A first role-playing game: What you have learned should then be implemented in another game, which this time will actually be a role-playing game. But again without a DSA license, another Pen&Paper work is to be used instead: Hexxen 1733.
• The new DSA RPG: And when all these points are ticked off, the staff is increased and trained and hopefully the funding and the international reputation of the studio are in a good place, then a new DSA role-playing game is to be created, with a reasonable production effort.

The goal is to have a game that is internationally competitive even without the brand's appeal and that satisfies DSA fans in Germany.

Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.

Great news! I would love a new DSA RPG. It seems to be a fair way off, but I will make sure to check out the visual novel, too. Even though, that is not really my cup of tea usually.

Great news but I'm a bit concerned about that "plan". 3 successful games as a pre-requisite could be a challenge.

This is the same Jan Wagner, who had been doing the Jagged Alliance Online Browsergame (and the boardgame) btw.

He is also the one who made Shadowrun Online.

Or who appeared in the news as Autokäufer
http://ndnw.net/no-hp-stuff/Wagner.JPG
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/show…postcount=1612

Originally Posted by Kordanor
This is the same Jan Wagner, who had been doing the Jagged Alliance Online Browsergame (and the boardgame) btw.

He is also the one who made Shadowrun Online.

Or who appeared in the news as Autokäufer
http://ndnw.net/no-hp-stuff/Wagner.JPG
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/show…postcount=1612

Wait!!! Is there a JA browsergame?????

I'd like to see more games in this realm as well, yet I would like them to remain respectful to the prior content. And, in this day and age, that might be asking far too much, imo. We shall see.

Originally Posted by henriquejr
Wait!!! Is there a JA browsergame?????

Well…there was…

First it was Jagged Alliance Online, which had been hosted by Gamigo.

Then after it ran for a while (it was heavily dependent on ingame purchases, without purchases you basically couldnt progress), gamigo decided its not worth it.

The creator Cliffhanger Studios then decided to acquire the full rights and change the game a bit.
It relaunched as Jagged Alliance Online Reloaded. Lots of the buy2win mechanics had been removed, or let's say "flattened", so that it was just a one-time-purchase. However you could still "see" these mechanics all over the place (just in a way that it looked weird and bad, but not that you would need to spend money).
Then it run a while like that…until it died as well.
While it was basically a offline experience game (like if you decided to play offline, which you could, it was a 100% offline experience) it still needed servers to run.
And now…you can't start the game anymore as the servers were shut down.

btw, same goes for Shadowrun Online aka Shadowrun Chronicles. It's also dead and can't be played anymore.
So Wagner's Legacy is 2 very dead games.
…and the board game. Which actually is quite decent supposedly. it got a high rating on boardgamegeeks, but then again it isn't widespread (and no longer available) so the ratings might have come from hardcore fans. Still, at least the ones who got it were quite happy with it.

Hmm…that does not inspire a lot of confidence for future Dark Eye games.

Thanks for sharing that info Kordanor.

I've enjoyed some of the past Dark Eye games so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for their RPG. It would be particularly cool if it were a tactical RPG.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Well…there was…

First it was Jagged Alliance Online, which had been hosted by Gamigo.

Then after it ran for a while (it was heavily dependent on ingame purchases, without purchases you basically couldnt progress), gamigo decided its not worth it.

The creator Cliffhanger Studios then decided to acquire the full rights and change the game a bit.
It relaunched as Jagged Alliance Online Reloaded. Lots of the buy2win mechanics had been removed, or let's say "flattened", so that it was just a one-time-purchase. However you could still "see" these mechanics all over the place (just in a way that it looked weird and bad, but not that you would need to spend money).
Then it run a while like that…until it died as well.
While it was basically a offline experience game (like if you decided to play offline, which you could, it was a 100% offline experience) it still needed servers to run.
And now…you can't start the game anymore as the servers were shut down.

btw, same goes for Shadowrun Online aka Shadowrun Chronicles. It's also dead and can't be played anymore.
So Wagner's Legacy is 2 very dead games.
…and the board game. Which actually is quite decent supposedly. it got a high rating on boardgamegeeks, but then again it isn't widespread (and no longer available) so the ratings might have come from hardcore fans. Still, at least the ones who got it were quite happy with it.

It seems everything with the name "Jagged Alliance" attached on just simply either is outright bad or doesn't survive

Originally Posted by henriquejr
It seems everything with the name "Jagged Alliance" attached on just simply either is outright bad or doesn't survive

The problem seems to be the various unknown developers they choose to make each new game and spin-off. The games range from being terrible to mediocre at best.

The coreplay versions weren't that bad but were more action focused. THQ Nordic is also developing Jagged Alliance 3 with developer Haemimont Games.

They have been quiet since last year though.

Update: There was an offical update on the games forum in April.

Link - https://community.jaggedalliance.com…and-a-promise/

Now to address the elephant in the room - why has the dev team been quiet since the game announcement back in September last year? We understand how this can be frustrating for the community, but the simple reason is that the game is in a rapid iteration development stage that prompted us to look more inwards than outwards. With some core mechanics still being refined it felt too early to talk about specifics publicly. We knew things were going to be constantly changing, and having to discuss a moving target could provide even more frustration. Finally, there are many things that we are simply not at liberty to discuss yet.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
THQ Nordic is also developing Jagged Alliance 3 with developer Haemimont Games.

And here I'm placing all my hope. I don't even expect a brilliant game. A good one would suffice

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
They have been quiet since last year though.

Perhaps they're just waiting to announce something more concrete at their Digital Showcase (August 12th, 2022), who knows…

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
The problem seems to be the various unknown developers they choose to make each new game and spin-off. The games range form terrible to mediocre at best.

The coreplay versions weren't that bad but were more action focused. THQ Nordic is also developing Jagged Alliance 3 with developer Haemimont Games.

They have been quiet since last year though.

Yep, it comes up during their stockholder financial meetings though. So it is still alive.
Also developers made a recent post in the forums:
https://community.jaggedalliance.com…and-a-promise/

So…yeah…not any news but at least JA3 is not dead just yet.

On another note what ever happened to Jagged Alliance: Rage? It was released in 2018 and all talk stopped afterward, and the reviews weren't that kind either.

Has anyone played that version?

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Also developers made a recent post in the forums:
https://community.jaggedalliance.com…and-a-promise/

So yeah not any news but at least JA3 is not dead just yet.

Just found that on steam and updated my post. It sounds like it got delayed and went through a few redesigns since it was announced. That can mean something good or bad.

I wonder what a developer known for city builders and action RPG's can pull off though.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
On another note what ever happened to Jagged Alliance: Rage? It was released in 2018 and all talk stopped afterward, and the reviews weren't that kind either.

Has anyone played that version?

Did a review over here, but its german:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IczE_AkFtH4

It hardly has anything to do with Jagged Alliance, its more like a turn based commandos you could say. Extremely linear, very little choice. More like combat puzzles you are solving.
On the technical side it's also quite bad.
So when I did the review I gave it a thumbs down and said it's worse than JA Online Reloaded.

So my ranking was:
JAOR>JA Rage>Ja Flashback

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Just found that on steam and updated my post. it sounds like it got delayed and went through a few redesigns since it as announced. That can mean something good or bad.

I wonder what a developer known for city builders and one action RPG can pull off though.

They also did Omerta, City of Gangsters, which was a tactics game.

Gamestar gave it a 59%
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/omer…t,3008911.html
titling with:
"An offer that we prefer to reject: Omerta combines an undemanding construction strategy with immature turn tactics - and ends up in the test in the harbor basin."

Steam rating seems to agree with 65%

Originally Posted by henriquejr
Wait!!! Is there a JA browsergame?????

oh….

Articles about the Visual Novel on the web page of Ulisses Spiele (all in German language) :

https://ulisses-spiele.de/fokusartik…tbook-thorwal/

https://ulisses-spiele.de/werkstattb…twind-artbook/

It appears to me as if they are doing an Artbook for that Visual Novel, too.

Strange is for me the decision to use an English title for it even for German-language audiences. Might be better for the international market, they. I tend to believe that they also believe that.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
btw, same goes for Shadowrun Online aka Shadowrun Chronicles. It's also dead and can't be played anymore.

I have Shadowrun Chronicles on Steam and intended to give it a try at some point for years now. It appears I could still install it. But can I still play it?