Alrik's GamesCom snippets

Hello, everyone.

Today I was at the Games Com, and I'm totally exhausted.

I met Gorath, actually, at the booth of dtp. dtp Betty was also there.

First, relatively bad news : I couldn't talk to any Larian member, and thus I can't say absolutely anything about an internationa release (date). dtp Betty even said to me that she had seen Sven ["Lar"] only for a very short time - in the business area, if I remember this correctly.

I also couldn't talk to anyone of Radon Labs - but I could play the Preview of Drakensang 2 !

You won't be surprised too much : It play 100 % like the original - except a few things I saw in the character generation ... But to me this were just minor enhancements.

So ... The Preview consisted of a very funny tale ... I was able to fight against "Perl-Morfus", which look like giant slugs (about the size of pigs or even wolves, only with a slug-like body shape), a bunch of pirates, and in the end - against a Zanth ! This is actually quite a powerful demon.

There was almost no story in the Preview, so there's few to tell you also. It was just about the ship having landed and everyone was preparing for a night rest.

I also played Venetica ! And me and Gorath (Gorath mostly, actually ) talked to someone ... I haven't heard his name, but I had the impression that he could have been one of the devs.

The game looks absolutely beautiful ! - Read . Colourful. It doesn't has anything "dark" and "gloomy" within it - at least not in the part I played - and everything looked just so lightly and colourful ! I like this !

There are fights there (I didn't any), and Gorath told me he was told that the game has about 70 % action.

Positive: There are absolutely no barrels to smash ! Well, there are barrels and boxed there, but they are indestructible.

The fight animations show very nice (imho), very colourful effects. I can't describe it with words.

The developing language was English, by the way, they have already everything translated into several languages, but no publisher for them yet.


The Add-On of King's Bounty will be out in September ! At least they're planning that for the GErman release. They are also hoping to be able to lauch the game simultaneously in different languages, too. Which includes English as well. So, all in all, they're hoping to release the game for all available languages in September ...

The dragon - pet, by the way, doesn't grow. Only his powers grow. Amelie aquires him - I think - through her journey into a different dimension. Which is - as how I understood it - the content of the game. Her adventures in another dimension. (?)

The lizard race has completely its own culture - and that means troops and buildings as well. Their most powerful unit has the name of "Tirex", if I remember this correctly. I was shown an English-language version of it, by the way.

Everything looks improved, so to say.

Majesty 2 uses the same Engine. It is partly stunning, how similar some of the graphics are. Everything looks 3D now, and a bit more "modern", so to say.

I don't remember any release day anymore, xcept of maybe September (again) ?


September is also the month of release of Tropico 3 ! There'll be a demo, too.

Made by a Bulgarian team which works for Kalypso.

El Presidente will be there like some kind of Avatar ... he also can hold speeches and "speed up" the slow building of buildings by going there in persona (I don't remember anymore how exactly).

The music style will be the same ! They're currently negotiating for a soundtrack CD ("because I want one, too", I was toild by the person explaining it to me), but it is unsure whether there'll be one or not (clouded the future is ... ) .

They're planning to do older games (he admitted they are on some kind of "Retro-Trip" right now), for example "Patrizier" and "Mad TV".

I didn't have the nerve to go into the queue of waiting people for

- TOR
- Risen
- StarCraft / D3
- Brink
- others.

Therefore no reports on them from my side.

Deep Silver publishes Risen now, as they seem to do with Sacred 2 or its add-on and thenew Batman game. At least all of them could be played at their booth.

Okay, that's it for now, I'm far too exhauted and REALLY need my sleep now ...

I'd be glad if Gorath could correct me, if needed - and perhaps expand everything a bit.

Good night (local time).

Alrik

Hehe, that sounded like a -- what do you call it -- Stream of Consciousness.

Thanks.

The dtp guy works QA on Venetica, and before that Drakensang.

I've played Dragon Age for half an hour, talked with two Bio community managers for an hour and then attended a presentation by the lead designer and the producer.
Nothing to worry. It's a hardcore RPG.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I didn't have the nerve to go into the queue of waiting people for
- StarCraft / D3

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Too bad. I'm hearing they were both awesome. Especially the desert areas in D3.

Who is Betty?

Community manager for dtp, hangs around in various related forums, including the Larian forum, where Alrik happens to hang around a lot too. Well, Alrik hangs around in a lot of forums, but, yeah.

Now that I've recuperated a bit, I can make a few more remarks :

- oddity: at the border where the tramway station meets the pedestrian lights (the station is located in the middle of the street, which means that pedestrians must use the pedestrial lights anyway), someone has sprayed the Drago Age logo on the street. It looks proffessionally, almost like a stamp, like being sprayed through a cut-out cardboard. This was the first time I actually got angry that I had forgot my camera. (I had noticed it before, but it was already too late, since it was already halfway on the way to the GamesCom).

- for Age of Conan there's an add-on : it's called "Rise of the Godslayer". I watched a small presentation about it, and I heard that the devs oriented themselves very much on Thai culture and buildings, even so, the presenter told, that they had been travelling through Asia and worked through many book showing older and antique Thai buildings.

I played a few seconds with it, and I must say that everything looks very colourful - but culourful in an (almost cliché-like) "Asian Style". The trees have had red leaves, for example, and the grass was red, too.

What I noticed is the tiger, which can be aquired (?) as a "tiger baby", andcan then grow like some sort of "battle companion", and it can even grow until one can ride on it. This strongly reminded me of Sacred 2.

If there's someone *regularly* playing Age of Conan here, I have got a small kind of card, with a field on it, which be "opened" like in a thing what my dictionary translates as a "lottery scratch ticket". I can't say, however, whether it is valid outside of Germany as well, since there is no hint about that on it.

- I asked someone there about a new adventure of the TLC/Dreamfall series, and I received an "maybe". The English-speaking man of Funcom said something more about it, which I sadly didn't quite understand acoustically.

I understood, however, that it was a "difficult question" and that some things stand between now and a sequel.

- My most negative experience of the GamesCom was that the Raving Rabbits figures of Ubisoft were "far long gone" when I arrived at their booth.
First thought: "CUTE !!!" Second thought : "GONE ? Damn !"

- On the other hand I've got a cute-looking Nemo-like fish from the GData booth now.

- another oddity was a booth of ... well, I still don't quite know. They were giving away paprica, tomatos, and similar vegetables. It was all about vegetables, no games at all (except a small kind of trivia game). Apart from their non-relation to games at all, this was a more than pleasant surprise, because there was nothing that healthy within the whole fair builing, it seemed to me. Discussing it with dtp Betty, she agree that giving out appleas, for example, wouldn't meet everyone's taste, but it would be healthy and quite a difference against what you get of sweets otherwise (normally).

- I watched a small discussion of several people in a conference room about "killer games". It was so tiresome (no, really !) that I was almost sleeping. I had expected an emotional thing, but it was nothing but ... let me put it like this: "politely exchange of opinions". It was exactly this way.

- On the Intel booth, that Anti-Nazi game could be played ... Ah, yes, now I remember the name again: It was "Wolfenstein". Since this is not my kind of games, I wasn't interested in it.

- Brink. By Bethesda. Someone of the company (?) speaking in German language explained it a bit to me:

It takes place in a future world ... Not unlike Waterworld ... but this time people battle one another, because of various reasons. I vagualy remember one side being an "army" and another side being "revolutionists" ? I'm not that sure anymore.

It plays like a shooter, it definitively is one, but the played character also gets some "experience points".

Missions are aquired through talking to people, I think ? Another bit of information that got blurred because I was already saving so many information bits inside of my head. Plus the general loudness inside of the halls.

- Batman looks very similar to Darth Vader: black, shiny armor ...

- The Cursed Mountain : It's an "survival game". It seems to play / take place within the Himalaya mountain range, with a mountain climber on search for his brother.

I watched some scenes, where he was "killing" what appeared as dark-blueish ghosts to me, within what I'd call a "typical" mountain village of that region - just how you would imagione such a mountain village made of stone houses. He "killed" them with his pick-axe.

Another screen of it on a different PC I saw at the booth of Deep Silver was showing something like what seemed to me an adventure part of the same game : The adventurer / moiuntain-climber next to a kneeling native. A sub-title read: "use your third eye". I don't know what this means.

- And since I'm at spirituality anyway: I was told that the Sacred 1 "talent"called "Reiki" isn't there anymore, but a thing with a similar meaning (and effect).

- There were sooo many (as it appeared to me) song-related games throughout the halls ! Everyone knows "Guitar Hero", and there are many more similar games out there !

- One rather odd example is a very similar game - but with Lego figures in it !

- From afar I could see a banner called "Brütal Legend" , and somewhere I saw another sign saying "Brütal Tatoos here !", but I somehow missed the game, although I would've liked to see it. I think I#ve just walked into the wrong direction(s).

- In the end, short before closing, I went into a discussion with someone from Activision. It was quite a fruitless discussion, and I almost assume this was because he saw in me nothing but a "fan".

The discussion began with my question what Jedi Academy was never re-released as a budget version meanwhile secondary market ebay prices are NEVER under 25 Euros ... often around 30 ... I argued that i couldn't understand on the other hand that a relatively "bad" game like Republic Commando is sold nowadays as a 10€ budget software.

He replied to me (it seemed to me that he was rather an businessman of Activion), that this question in principle should go to LucasArts. Activision is doing the distribution for them for the European market (and in Germany as well, hence my question), but they don't have any influence on what is being decided in the LucasArts headquarters.

The discussion went to and fro, and in the course of it he - that's how I understood it - said that he found it absolutely normal and necessary to produce for the mass market.

He seemingly didn't quite understand what I meant: I meant that producing for a mass market might lead to a loss of diversification and - in my opinion - a lowering of ... what's the word ? I take "standards", because I don't remember any better word.

I compared the mass market to the "Bild" newspaper, and something like higher standards" to the German "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" [in short: FAZ].

I believe he didn't see the need for diversification and to rather demanding games like catering not only the mass market, but also rather "niche groups", as I called them (referring to the FAZ), mostly because of the immense costs, which don't allow any failures at all in the game development.

To me, in an afterthought, this means that the current very high development costs kind of dictate that games are optimized against the mass market, because the high costs don't allow failures of any kind.

The discussion had to be broken off, because he had other work to do.

In another afterthought, his point of view was right - from his position. Blizzard delivers to the mass market. There is no catering for niche groups at all.

There are no demanding games within Blizzard in the sense of ... let's take PS:T, for example.

So, from his position, he is certainly right.

My very, *very* personal prediction for the future is, that the rising costs will demand the development for niche groups as well, for getting the costs back in.

Like ... let's say changing RPGs so that players of other genres can be "taken into the boat" as well. Like for example the SIMs.

- And, well, although this discussion was rather fruitless for me, without it, I wouldn't have been able to meet a good friend at the entrence when I was leaving the fair. So, we had a good talk outside, afterwards , by which he showed me an exclusive SW:TOR comic, that seemingly had been given out at the ComicCoin earlier this year, too. He had even been able to watch this "presentation of in-game play" (as I was told was it, actually), meanwhile I didn't have the nerve to wait for that - especially since my feet were already aching a bit when I finally met the booth there (I went quite slowly through the halls).

Well, I think that's it for now.

Until I remember a few more bits.

Arhu said:

Community manager for dtp, hangs around in various related forums, including the Larian forum, where Alrik happens to hang around a lot too. Well, Alrik hangs around in a lot of forums, but, yeah.

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Well, I wouldn't call it "hang".

Meanwhile looking at the new Tropico site www.tropico3.com , I remember a new feature: Players can upload their maps (can be created) to an online server, and then others can walk through these maps.

No multiplayer, just a kind of "visiting" other player's maps.

Another snipped just returns to my memory :

In the King's Bounty Add-On, there will be a (graphics options) feature that makes the game display itself so that the use of green-red glasses (or was it blue-red ?) makes the game look like being in 3D.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Another snipped just returns to my memory :

In the King's Bounty Add-On, there will be a (graphics options) feature that makes the game display itself so that the use of green-red glasses (or was it blue-red ?) makes the game look like being in 3D.

Click to expand...

Your pulling our leg right? A 3D game? I've hoped they would make one of those for a long time, but never thought the technology was there. I figured when I was about 50 or 60 they would be able to do that.

The last 3D attempt I believe was by nintendo with those funky red goggles dubbed "Virtual Boy." It didn't sell well. I have no idea if that wiki link is correct with the low sales being due to it being so darn ugly. I heard that it brought on some pretty bad headaches as well as being ugly

Anyways, if your not joking I would love to see how they pull it off.

Thanks for all the information, Alrik. Sounds like you've having a very fun if very exhausting time.

I have to say the stuff I'm hearing about Armored Princess is not doing much for me, but I'm relieved to hear Gorath say Dragon Age is a solid rpg.

skavenhorde said:

Your pulling our leg right?

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No, I don't. Honestly.

The person who explained everything to me even switched the display by marking that option in the "graphics options" menu.

It looked odd without glasses, though, and I didn't have any, so I can't tell much more about it.

But it is there. I have seen it.

Of course, there's always the possibility that they'll take it away from the final release, but I doubt they'll do it. Everything seemed to be okay for me.

magerette said:

but I'm relieved to hear Gorath say Dragon Age is a solid rpg.

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Gorath to the Venetica-man (mentioned above) :

"They [of Bioware] can say what they want, it's nothing but Baldur's Gate 3."

skavenhorde said:

Your pulling our leg right? A 3D game? I've hoped they would make one of those for a long time, but never thought the technology was there. I figured when I was about 50 or 60 they would be able to do that.

Click to expand...

And you are pulling his legs, aren't you?

Anyway I believe I still have the blue and read glasses for the stereo mode of "Depth Dwellers".
(One of the pictures there shows 3d-mode.)

Edit: That reminds me... I have DOS Box and I have the "Depth Dwellers" CD...: May be I give it another try...

Second Edit: I just tried the glasses with that screen shot - it still works!!!

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Gorath to the Venetica-man (mentioned above) :

"They [of Bioware] can say what they want, it's nothing but Baldur's Gate 3."

Click to expand...

Well, that's still a LOT better than I was thinking it was going to be from all those silly trailers.

There was recently an article about 3D in games and otherwise in the German magazine called c't ... http://www.heise.de/kiosk/archiv/ct/2009/15 The articles can be bought online.

Edit: @margerette: Yes, this seems to be the "big question mark" : How could such a marketing evolve ? No-one seems to know or understand it, it appears to me ...

skavenhorde said:

A 3D game? I've hoped they would make one of those for a long time, but never thought the technology was there.

Click to expand...

Magic Carpet was in 3D.

As far as I know, all Direct 3D games can be played with those red/cyan glasses nowadays, there are drivers for that. There's even a plugin for Google's street view (?). And YouTube allows uploading of 3D videos too -- you upload something side by side and they are changed to red/cyan on playback (not pre-encoded).

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Gorath to the Venetica-man (mentioned above) :

"They [of Bioware] can say what they want, it's nothing but Baldur's Gate 3."

Click to expand...

To clarify this:
1. I quoted somebody.
2. This was before the Bio event later that afternoon.

I've played the PC version for ca. 30 minutes. It felt great. Definitely a hardcore RPG. Great dialogs, a lot of choices early on. It's typical Bioware stuff. Focus on story and characters. Writing and music were of exceptionally high quality.
I cannot say anything about the combat, apart from the stuff already known.

The weird marketing is easy to explain: EA tries to expand the market for the game. They think they have a game which will sell well if people can be convinced to actually give it a try. The spectacular trailers try to catch gamers outside the RPG crowd.

Yes, I vaguely remembered that you might have quoted somebody, but I wasn't that sure anymore.

Gorath said:

The weird marketing is easy to explain: EA tries to expand the market for the game. They think they have a game which will sell well if people can be convinced to actually give it a try. The spectacular trailers try to catch gamers outside the RPG crowd.
Non of the people from Bio nor EA Germany I talked to were happy about the stuff EA NA did. They can see how worried their core audience is.

Click to expand...

If they only dumb down their audience without dumbing down their game, this is not gentlemanlike, but it is ok with me.

But before buying this game I will wait for the first complete reviews after release just to make sure that this interpretation is correct.

Edit: Thanks Alrik and Gorath for your infos.