Operation Condor 2 has been launched. The purging has begun. RNA does not tolerate political dissension on it's corp property in Santo.

Well, just to be fair, its a different scenario because this SR4 hater does in fact not play sr4 and chooses to stay with sr3...

I don't have the option of staying with a good playable modern SR console or PC game. They didnt leave me with that.

Oh, yeah, huh?

Yahoo! News

Dark Horizons (along with a Hellboy video game).

No... shit.

I'm at E3 now - well, I'm at my hotel now.

1. This game is not only for Vista, but for the xbox as well. And not just that (and I'm super jazzed about this part, just from a tech standpoint and what it means for both PC and console games)...

2. PC players and xbox players can play together. I haven't been able to ask the devs yet, and I'm not sure they would tell me if I had, but I suspect it's through xbox Live that this magic occurs. Since fasastudios is a Microsoft studio now.

3. I have pictures. PM me if you want them.

4. I have the trailer recorded on my shaky-cam digital camera. You won't be able to hear anything and it's not in-game footage, but it's pretty cool. I was stuck by the screen where their trailer cinematic ran over and over along with others - and I actually really liked their music - rare. I hope it's ingame stuff and not something that a 3rd party trailer company put in just for e3.


NOW... my review. I, like many of you, was prepared to hate this game on sight, just based on it being an FPS without any persistent RPG-type elements.

The Good:

1. xbox and PC can play together. That's just freaking cool.

2. They've embraced the spirit of Shadowrun inasmuch as a Quake Arena style FPS can - For example, your character can buy tech or magic upgrades with cash won in the matches (ala CS), but there's a tension between the amount of tech/magic (Essence) that players can have. The more tech you have the less magic you can have.

3. Fast paced with a lot of cool twists on traditional FPS gameplay.
- Players can rez other players, then the rezzing player earns money for upgrades off of the accomplishments of the player they rezzed
- If you are rezzed, then your life is tied to the player that rezzed you, if they die you die.

4. The art style is unique, colorful and pretty consistent - a refreshing departure from tired body-armored soldiers stomping around (though humans come close). Elves are lithe and lean and pretty cool looking. The spell effects are well done and impactful without being fit-inducing color particle fests.

5. No orks.

The Bad:

1. Map they're showing is an architecturally ridiculous (though perfectly normal FPS level) ancient Aztec/Inca/Maya ruin. Tomorrow I need to ask if there's a single-player story to go with the gameplay or if it's just multiplayer battles - I hope there's a story. Because the gameplay is really fun, but I don't think multiplayer arenas are enough to fill a box.

2. No hint at persistent RPG elements. Though this bothers me less and less as I accept this as a Shadowrun themed FPS that is focused on visceral moments rather than the holy grail vision I had of next-gen RPG gameplay with total character customization and layers and layers of character development.

3. No orks. I'm guessing they were going for the races that really changed the sillhouette of the characters and orks from a distance or from behind look pretty much like human. That or they flat didn't have time to add another race. This is just speculation. Another question for the fasa guys.



If there's anything you want to know post it here... I'll try to check this before going to the conference tomorrow. Friday is the last day. I wish I'd gotten this up last night.

Me too.

But I can accept the differences between my bluesky SR game and this one and move on.

As a developer it really galls me to see people tearing apart the team and calling them lazy or stupid or half-wits, or whatever.


They didn't set out to make the game many of you seem to have wanted. Cry about that. But for my money - and I'm not an FPS player - just the fact that this does have some cool Shadowrunny features - even if it's just that it's made by fasa and has elves and trolls and dwarves and humans - that's good enough for me.

Me? Halo didn't do it for me. Maybe something I love as much as SR will get me into the FPS genre.

***

When I replied to the thread I thought it was just 3 pages, didn't see that it was 9 pages and that you folks had already sussed out as much as I have. Apologies for the redundancy.

But do give the game a chance for what it is and keep on holding out for the One True SR RPG...

I don't think I've called the developpers lazy, I know a lot of work goes into game development - which is why I'm severly disappointed that they chose to go this route. There are so many games that are close Shadowrun: Deus EX, Anarchy Online to name a couple...

Seriously, if they had called this game by any other name, it would probably be pretty successful! Seriously most of what makes Shadowrun cyberpunk meets magic has not happened yet.
They hope that people will get into the game long enough to forgive their tresspasses... unfortunately they're going to get SR fans to play the game... from what I see on the boards, both here and on the game's website, that's less than 1% right now.

ShadowDragon, I disagree. It's not a sneakysneaky game of one-off jobs against the megacorps - so I think it's not ABOUT a shadowrun, but I still think it's a 'Shadowrun' game - if only loosely. I guess the difference between me and the majority of posters is that I can accept that. And I can accept that even though it isn't the game I'd like to have seen, that it can be healthy for the game we all love.

***

Somebody said earlier that MS already has the market cornered for console FPS - that I totally agree with, I am a little puzzled why the game has developed the way that it has. Who needs a console FPS with Halo around? Not MS.

I disagree with the message that because this game is an FPS that it means the Future of Shadowrun Videogames is locked in stone. That it will be FPS to the end of time, Amen. Trust me when I say that MS likes to brand anything they can and that if this game is a success they'll be interested in sequels and branches to the IP.

IMO the best hope we have of seeing a Shadowrun CRPG - ironically, considering the way some of you feel about the FPS - is for this Shadowrun to be a success. Whoever said MS would drop the game like a hot potato if it wasn't successful wasn't far off. If they can't make a business case for a sequel you won't see one. And in all likelihood, it won't be 'hmmm... SR FPS didn't work, maybe an RPG..."... No, if it fails you probably won't see a CRPG either. It's a little scary. So, being all excited about how this game will flop and fail (and crapping in their community forums) could very well kill the CRPG that you really want to see.

So throttle back - just to be on the safe side. That's my take on it.

I want to see fasa studios make more games. I'm not sure how many of the old guard are there, last I knew some were. I want to see a Shadowrun RPG. It could be out there. But it won't be if MS doesn't have a business case for it.

***

And Dranem, I didn't say 'Dranem, it really galls me when...' I wasn't calling you out in particular - but calling other folks out to lay off the developers.

***

Development is a sticky, complicated business and it's SUPER hard to make everyone happy. There's a lot of money at stake. Dogpiling an angry thread is understandable, but go easy on the devs. They've worked hard and aren't jackass idiots like some folks seem to think - and - it's entirely possible that the decisions on the game weren't entirely in their hands.

It is punishing to go out to your own community forums and see page after page after page of rants and complaints and bitter (even justified, or, especially if justified) disappointment with the work you've been pouring your life in to for the last couple years. I haven't been out there, so if my admonishment is unjustified, please ignore it... But I'll go ahead and give it...

It is important to communicate. But please, if only just because I'm asking, pretty please with a cherry on top, do be polite.

No. They chose their employer, they didn't get themselves transferred to a different team, they deserve no slack (with the exception of people who had nothing to do with any of the gameplay or world aspects—I'm not going to blame whoever made/tweaked the graphics engine, for example. Well, ok, maybe I will because it looks like they did a mediocre job, but they aren't responsible for the overall trainwreck.)

Hard work does not justify reward. Good work does.

~J

I was thinking about it in these terms yesterday. I think the more appropriate analogy goes like this:

Imagine a world where the first and only Star Wars games were X-Wing (1993), X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (1997) and a japanese-only Elite-style game that nobody has ever heard of. No vector-based Star Wars arcade game, nothing else.

Now it's 2004 and a new Star Wars game is announced! Everyone is flipping out! What will it be?! The game turns out to be Star Wars: Battlefront. A Battlefield 1942 clone that is utterly lame even when compared to an early version of the unofficial BF1942 mod Galactic Conquest created by fans and distributed for free on the internet.

This seems to be the general consensus even among people who are not very familiar with Shadowrun. The anger felt by the tabletop gamers on DSF is definitely shared (although to a lesser degree) by those whose only contact with Shadowrun was in console form. Nobody is buying the "game world was too complex so we just threw it out" excuse, either. People have seen too many detailed tabletop settings turned into excellent CRPGs for this to even sound remotely plausible.

What you didn't read is that Xbox players will be given a handicap on aiming. If you can't see that there are no winners in this situation, you haven't played enough multi-player FPS.

Ever played a medic in Battlefield 2? The only "twist" here is to give players no reason to "rez" those who they don't consider to be very good at the game.

Because keeping yourself and your "flag carrier"/"squad" alive isn't hard enough? Why not just make it so that if anyone on your team dies you lose health?

My thoughts exactly.

I have no pity for the developers. Same goes for their apologists.

Wow, that would be fun... it would be like Dungeon Keeper meets diplomacy. Kickass.

My plan is to be fair this week to the developers, which involves a good deal of dissapointment and even a bit of anger with a side of shock.

But right now what am I the most choked about? That at the current rate we'll have this Shadowrunish-sort-of-but-not-really take on SA before we get SoLA.

At a Sci-fi convention somewhere somewhen, a person asked a panel of writers what their advice would be for an aspiring writer trying to get into the business. Most of the panelists gave balan pre-scripted answers. Harlan Ellison simply said "Don't be a whore." This is why there is no Dragonriders of Pern television series.

Sometimes you have to just let a project die rather than letting soulless executives butcher it beyond all recognition. Surely, there was someone on that devolpment team who did have the power to shelf the project and let it die, one way or another.

On a philosophical level, I'm in total agreement with you. On the more realistic level though, I know first-hand as a writer that you sometimes have to write things you don't like. Well, that's not true. You don't have to. But if you don't, you need to find work elsewhere.

Working for FASA Studio probably isn't a bad gig. Most of the employees probably aren't willing to go find other work in a highly competitive field because of creative differences over this game. Especially given that many of them probably aren't even too familiar with the print RPG.

Though, that said, unless Microsoft micro-managed the Shadowrun game (not that far-fetched, I know from a friend that they often micro-managed Turbine Entertainment's games until Turbine and Microsoft went their seperate ways), someone in FASA Studio likely had a ton of input in the game's design direction. But, to be honest, they probably approved this design. Doesn't make it good, but they are probably at least partially responsible for it and probably thought it was a great idea at the time.

Sure...if you're the writer. Certainly you shouldn't whore out your own creation, and you can be mad at the FASA guys for selling the videogame rights if you really want to. But being mad at the developers of this mess is like being mad at the guys who would have acted in the Pern TV series, had it happened. The Microsoft dev team can't whore out Shadowrun, because it doesn't belong to them. That responsibility lay with FASA, but they gave it away years ago.

Fair enough, Kage.

Admittedly, I felt the same way until I actually saw it. It was pretty cool. Fun game.