hmm, makes me think of the clone saga that hit spider-man at one time. thankfully i never got mixed up in trying to figure it out...

still, it ended up bringing back the green goblin from the dead...

its seems the reason given for the restart of the shadowrun history was that they burned themselfs when trying to make the battletech/mechwarrior based games fit inside the storys.

thing is tho that both people here and on the shadowrun.com forum have shown that you can create a FPS inside the existing shadowrun world with only minor work. personaly im partial for a "desert wars" kinda game. or maybe even "tundra wars", as i think there was talk in sota63 about starting up stuff in the siberian tundra...

There is some "minor work", mostly just learning the setting i think, that could go into the backstory or the setting. But i'll go out on a limb and say i find this idea a bit better than Desert Wars. Urban Brawl too would feel quite contrived, even more so than what they have.

But that still wouldn't help in regard to things like the lack of Combat spells.

The problem is to have a shot of making money they most certainly must be able to sell to a LOT more than just the SR RPG P&P customers. So you need to create a game that is fun to play on it's own, and also stands apart from other games outside of just "it is based on SR". I really don't see a canon SR rules computer game being that engaging on it's own, certainly not one built on a reasonable budget.

In implementing a computer program you have to be very aggresive in thwarting feature bloat. I completely agree that combat spells would be hard to differentiate from guns in funtionality of the game. So they would add little value to the game play. It's likely why Orcs didn't make the cut too.

That's also why teleport and rez came in. So they WOULDN'T be making just another copy cat FPS clone.

But by spending the coding effort for spells on things that guns don't do they expand the range of the game moreso.

The rez is relatively rare, and nobody here has managed to come up with the ongoing link to the healer (effectively sustained spell). To clasify a how game as merely a copy cat because a variation of it's elements have been used in other games, and not even together, is a very unrealistic characterization. Damn, take a look around the SR's offical metaplots.


"The world would be a better place if people would just accept that there’s nothing new under the sun, and everything you can do with a person has probably been done long before you got there." - Hooper X, Chasing Amy

and that's bad, in your world?

and, what AE said. linking the resurectee to the resurecter is an innovative detail--one, i might note, that has no place in SR. they can come up with all the neat, innovative crap in the world, and i still won't lay down money for it as long as they persist in calling it Shadowrun.

Thats because instead of building a game that fit into the existing story, they wanted to create a whole new type of game that had nothing to do with Battletech, but used the name.

Sound familiar?

So they re-wrote the game to match their craptacular idea, instead of using the greatness that was already their.

One word: EGO

Heaven forbid you expand on someone elses idea. No no, you have to crap all over it and make your own idea, but use their name so that you get the IP.

Diverting that same coding effort to Powerbolt instead is bad. In my world coding resources are limited.

*shrug* Capturing spawnpoints to win a game is certainly old hat.

Natural Selection certainly wasn't the first FPS to have a team commander mode to gather intell reports from the team members, set waypoints for resource deployment, and give directions from an overhead map view. I don't recall any that made it a -requirement- to have that position filled, but that's just a fun little trick. Right? :^)

i'm a fan of doing things right. to me, that means that if you have to extend the total time you spend creating the game in order to match the mechanics and world up with the source material, you do so. partly out of respect for the source material, and partly because, as McMurray pointed out, making a name for yourself as a company that treats IPs with respect is a good way to ensure long-term profit.

That's not nearly all the human team commander does in NS, nor does that even touch upon all the other things that NS does different from all the other popular multiplayer FPSs that were around when it came out. But, if you think that fantasy races and a few spells are as big a leap in gameplay from UT2k# and CS:S as NS is from CS, DoD, etc., then I doubt I can convince you otherwise.

mainly because i'm dealing with a sarcastic ass. so when you thank me for agreeing with you, i tend to assume you think i disagreed at some point.

at any rate, like i said: i'm a fan of doing things right. if it can't be done right for a reasonable cost, the choice to me is between not doing it and doing it right at unreasonable cost. i understand there are other ways of going about projects; for those who use those other methods, i reserve the right to put $ in their company name.

Just using different metahuman names instead of different 'classes' of gear/armor on humans is no big deal at all. I certainly said no such thing. Or "a few spells" just for being spells. But how those specific spells, rez and the teleport, work in the game seem like they are going to matter (the vine block one does sound interesting but i doubt that is ground breaking). Does Natural Selection represent a larger "leap"? Since the size of the leap is really only important in the context of a given direction that is a rather esoteric question.

Is it enough different from other FPS squad vs.? Maybe, especially given the timing on the platform. The point is that it is does have a difference and it has the potential to bring about a game play different that is meaningful. I do think the single biggest thing that sets it appart right now though is playing together cross-platform.

But these cries of "make it original, not copy cat" is just a bullshit red herring anyway. How many people here have advocated, both before and after the E3 announcement, effectively making a "copy cat" of Deus Ex?

Just tried to hunt down a report on the actual E3 Shadowrun demo (not the CGI trailer). I'm not sure exactly which metric was being used for determining "most anticipated", but it wouldn't seem to line up with internet gaming press run. Judging from the sparse comments made about the E3 demo they are either not using the UT 2007 engine, they are running with an outdated build of the UT 2007 engine, or they really, really suck at models, skins, and textures. Hard to tell myself from the crappy resolution video clips IGN has.

Another thought has occured to me. This game's real purpose [to MS] might be partially a technology demo of Live Anywhere. The Shadowrun license being used as more of a throw-away, which doesn't seem out of line with what i'd imagine it's worth to Microsoft was. Who knows, if sales really tank they might end up putting it into a bundle with the 360 console later on and/or bundling it with the PC Live Anywhere product (if they have one).

the thing is, that's not what they're doing. their intention, as stated on the site by the lead developer, is to completely rebuild the entire history of SR.

as for job pressure causing canon to slip down the list, i have no sympathy for them because that is the job they chose. if they want a low-pressure job, there are plenty of fast-food joints looking for burger-flippers.

It is entirely reasonable to cut back on it if you don't readily have the info and expertise to implement. In the end you can only make decisions on what you have in front of you. Sure you could go out and try track it down and research it yourself. But that's just something else that you don't have time for in your 80+ hour week. Going out and trying do someone else's while abondoning yours is a good way to not get your job done, and ultimately get yourself turfed.

EDIT: Of course they could have tried to hire someone on with a solid SR petigree and Microsoft could have assigned a priority to that. But to what end? Here we get back to what they are trying to sell, and what they think the biggest chunk of market is willing to pay for. SR with computer game flavour or a computer game with SR flavour. They think computer game with SR flavour. If they are right that isn't lazy, that is called listening. If they are wrong it is called fucking up.

It isn't personal.

They aren't using the whole of the IP, just what they see as the core themes/flavour that resonate with a wide audience of people. Brand recognition is part of it. But delivering what people like is what'll eventually seal the deal.

Believe it or not the minuteia of SR history doesn't have that broad of audience. SR itself isn't that huge to start with, and you would get a blank slackjawed stare if you heard what passes for SR history at most tables. Partialy because they don't have access to all the books, but mostly because they don't really care.