Be Excellent To Each Other

This popped up as an Xbox demo today (which I can't play yet of course!) and I hadn't heard anything about it so I went looking. Knowing nothing of it I pulled up this YouTube video which is a demo/interview with the lead designer and it looks intriguing. The art style is more World of Warcraft than Skyrim but you get used to it and I started to see shades of Trine in it which is nice. It's got all the usual tropes apparently (guilds to join, XP to earn, skill trees to advance up, potions to make and enchantments to learn) but the combat is brawler style attack-and-dodge rather than traditional my-numbers-are-bigger-than-yours stuff you see in Bethesda products. Given my recent rage quitting at Skyrim the idea of a good open world RPG with all the good stuff but none of your bullshit Benny Hill combat has totally piqued my interest and I'm more interested in this than in anything else I've seen recently.

Anyone else giving a shit? Anyone actually played the demo and willing to weigh in?

It does look very nice. I'll be waiting for opinions from people on forums/reviews first, though. Mainly because I've barely touched Skyrim and I still have to finish Dark Souls!

Demo is out on steam as well, will have a look and report back. Looks interesting from screenshots and videos, hopefully it's not shit.

7/10

I've got the PS3 version of the demo downloaded but I won't have time to give it a shot until tomorrow or maybe Saturday. I'll report back on the slim chance there's anyone but me that cares.

A generous demo but I getting my fill of fantasy rpg with skyrim & that glass is now full.

Just played the demo and initial impressions are very good. I didn't get a chance to do any enchanting or alchemy but you do level up and so get a chance to see the perks and skill trees and there looks to be a lot of depth there. Generally speaking the framework of it screams Skyrim but the movement and combat are a mixture of Fable and God of War style brawler. You equip two weapons (generally a ranged weapon like a bow and then your choice of a slow/damaging or fast/light melee weapon) plus whatever magic you've got and everything's on face buttons so you can switch between them at will during a fight. It's an excellent system and being able to seamlessly chain attacks together is very satisfying. So, for instance, you might start by smacking someone with a shock spell then roll backwards and quickly fire a few arrows into their face (or one charged arrow if you've got the time). If they're too close by this point you just finish them off with a sword combo to the face or block their strike with your shield du jour and magic them right up as your mana's recharged again by this time. There's not much else to the combat during the demo but all of the weapons can be upgraded and combos purchased so hopefully it'll deepen as the games moves on. I should note here that the game does allow for a more stealthy approach that what I describe above; some weapons can instakill if you get to an enemy undetected and Stealth is something you can level up. It even essentially stels Bethesda's idea of having an eye icon on screen to show you whether you're visible or not. Although in KoA each enemy gets their own eye icon as you remain unseen to one guy even if his mate's already clocked you. Anyway, I'll be curious to see how they balance that style of combat with the usual RPG tropes (i.e. how to make sure there's certain enemies/battles you can't manage at lower levels), although I'm a bit worried that they'll just have to close some of the world down entirely to balance this and the openness of the world will be lost. Time, or indeed reviews, will tell.

Aside from the combat it does seem like your standard RPG. After the tutorial part of the demo you're dumped in a town with people to speak to and buildings to enter and when I went wandering vaguely towards my eventual goal I stumbled across a barrow of sorts with enemies to kill and loot to be had. Whether it sticks to that template or moves away from it after the point I experienced, fuck knows.

What else? The graphics are very nice, although I did keep thinking throughout that a more realistic style would've suited the game better but that's just a personal preference.

It's worth pointing out that the PS3 version of the demo was as buggy as fuck. Part the way through my playthrough the sound went to shit; only the incidental noises (sword strikes, etc) were there but all music, background noise and voice audio dropped away entirely. The voice track came back one during a single forced conversation and then left again and, amusingly, the music dropped in utterly randomly at one point for about five seconds and then fucked off again just as randomly. At that same time as the audio fucking up all the conversations with NPC went to shit. I could stop someone and talk to them but as soon as I selected a conversation option the game would fast forward to the end of that conversation branch to quickly to read and dump me back to the conversation menu again so it become pointless to even talk to anyone. Those issues pale into insignificance in comparison to two other problem I came up against:

The frame rate was very variable. And I don't mean like it would be mostly fine and then slow down when a few enemies appeared on-screen; I mean it varied almost from second to second. Like you'd be running towards a door or whatever and you'd catch yourself thinking, "Fuck me, this is very smooth!" Only to realise three seconds later that the speed had dropped again and the smoothness of three seconds ago was only surprising due to the contrast with what you were now seeing. Once you've noticed this once it becomes obvious that it's happening almost constantly. The 'slower' frame rate would actually be fine if it was constant but the chopping and changing was, obviously, an annoyance. If they can keep to the faster frame rate in the retail version I'll be very impressed as it's lovely when it manages it.
The reason I didn't get to see as much of the game as I'd have liked is because it crashed on me. Hard. To the extent that I had to simply switch the PS3 off using the physical button on the front of the console. Obviously that's a total fucking no-no and is something they better get sorted for the proper release.

So, yeah, the demo version of the code at least is very unpolished and while I hope this it's an older code branch I'm still going to be wary of picking it up quickly even if it does review well. Probably one to let other people jump on and see how they fare as I can see some very early patches in this game's future.

Oh, and I should mention that if you play the demo through you unlock items that can be used in Mass Effect 3. Similarly apparently playing the Mass Effect 3 demo will unlock items for KoA.

I liked the demo, its very Fable-esque. I kept losing and gaining voice acting, though I thought they just didn't bother with including VA after a certain point. Frame rate: solid on the Xbawks, If it stuttered I didn't notice.

Demo seems pretty good. As Pundy said, the look of it is very much like Fable, though I have hopes that the character levelling and combat will have a bit more depth to them. Will probably get this.

Pretty ringing endorsement for it here from one of the Penny Arcade guys who's got the full version and has been playing it for a few days. I don't agree with him about the art style (a few utterly horrendous textures aside, Skyrim looked quite nice I thought) but his opinion on the combat in Skyrim matches mine to the letter so I'm excited about this praise for the depth and fun of KoA's system. It's also hopeful sounding what he says about the character classes being flexible, which is a big part of what attracted me to the game when watching the interview video I linked in the OP. In Skyrim et al I always wanted to mix and match what I levelled up, but I felt you got punished for straying too far from the standard warrior/mage/stealthy guy templates by ending up shit at everything as opposed to very good at one thing if you specialised they way the game expects you too. It sounds like KoA's system actually encourages this kind of experimentation though which is excellent.

ETA: Also you can apparently undo your choice of ability upgrades and whatnot and respend them again in a different way; so sort of re-rolling your character on the fly I suppose which seems like an interesting idea. Apparently MMO's have this feature, I've never played one though so I don't know how it works in practise.

First reviews are starting to roll in and it's looking pretty good; though not amazing by any stretch. The Eurogamer one makes a couple of jabs at the initially generic nature of the game world but is overall pretty glowing. As one of the final paragraphs puts it:



I'm genuinely considering ignoring the metric fuckton of other unplayed games I've got and leaping into this once I've finished with Zelda. I replayed the demo on the Xbox (to unlock the Mass Effect 3 kit) and playing it withouth the glitchiness of the PS3 code meant I was properly gutted when the 45 minute time limit ran out which is a good sign.

Okay, had this from Lovefilm, and really enjoyed it... For the first 20 hours, then I got sick of the faff. Combat is bloody great, closer to something like DMC than typical RPG combat. The faff comes with the sheer amount of quests to do, and you have no clue how long each one is when you start it. Oh and they are usually fucking miles from where you aquired them too. Towards where I got even the side quests were becoming multi-stage things. It gradually sapped my will to carry on, even though I generally enjoyed the gameplay.

Oh, at one point I accidentally sided with the baddy of a quest chain, due to slightly vague phrasing of the Mass Effect style responses, and the game would not let me change that decision, and I had to go and wipe out a friendly village to complete the quest. Which was a bit shit.

In summary: good combat, some good quests, but it gets a bit too 'single player MMO' and faffy.

Ooh, this is rather jolly fun. Much like Divine Divinity and that ilk.

It's exceedingly pretty.

This has now kept me up to 3am far more times than is healthy. It's absolutely brilliant fun. Combat is solid and fluid, quests are varied and have some depth to them, and there's tons to keep my inner loot-whore happy. So much fun.

I might scale this mountain of game apathy to place the disc in the drive one day.

That's good to hear as it's an aspect of the game that seemed to come in for quite a bit of criticism. I'm still totally gagging for this one but can't really even consider it given the size of my backlog (of games!). Fucksticks.

Wow. This looks absolutely gorgeous. Simple control scheme and excellent menu structure that's really intuitive. Only played 20 minutes and can confirm it is roughly one thousand times better than Dark Souls.

This really is fantakka. I was worried when reading the sticker "From the mind of" hack extraordinaire R.A.Salvatore on the box. The only way it could've sold itself worse would be having "from the minds of Dan Abnett, Kevin J Anderson, Jodi Picoult and the person who now ghostwrites the Virginia Anderson books" on there. Reminds me a lot of Fable, rather than the Elder Scrolls.

Hmm yes,yes?!

*Recoils*

Art style is very Fable-esque, definitely. And it's a refreshing change. Combat has massively more depth than Fable. I'm really enjoying playing this a lot.

Let me elaborate further. They both use one button for each type of attack, but the finesse comes in timing those attacks for maximum damage. There's elements of Dark Souls in the combat, with dodging and shielding, but it's a much more frenetic and exciting affair than that crap. The art style is on the verge of cartoony like Fable was, and the world design cuts up a huge map into easily rompable seperate areas with caves/strongholds/ruins etc off clearly visible forks. Unlike Fable you can walk from one end of the world to the other without loading screens, it doesn't skimp on the proper RPGness with NUMBERS(!) and loot, and there's no over arching moral maze that I can see thus far.

And just to reiterate, it's achingly beautiful.

Craster and Dimmers are selling me on this.

As for Salvatore -- he's an idiot. But then again, Richard Morgan is an ace novelist and he wrote the derivative claptrap that stood for a plot in Crysis 2. So in summary: who can tell?

As well as Fable I felt there were shades of Trine in the graphical style when I played the demo.

From reports, the two DLC packs are really good worthwhile additions to the game, too.

Just wait. It gets shitter. I hope you like collecting 50 bear asses.

Bear donkeys? Are they like Esquilaxes?

*Buys*

So much to do! This is what I want from my RPGs. To be utterly flooded with quests.

Not "bare asses", fool.

This is fmazin. Absolutely fmazin. Completely obliterated by gaming funk.

Doing the Teeth of Naros DLC now. It's pretty damned big. Worth the 800 moon pounds, I think.

Blucey did say the DLC was actually worth it with this. Also: fucking Ettins.

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to fight them. Though I have heard they give great head(s).

Finished. Really enjoyed that. Recommended. Studio in trouble. I am a foul and vile pervert.

Did you do the DLCs? I thought they were great, although got a little peeved with the neverending quests that you can't get rid of.

No. Waiting for price drop inevitability. I bum goats.

That rainbow is made from shitting woodlouse out from between the bread cheeks.

And done. What an excellent game. Dragged a little bit towards the end, and finding the top tier of smithing components was nigh-on impossible, but I really liked that. Kept me thoroughly entertained for many hours.

Is this what you'vebwen up to when you ahouks have been being awesome with us?

Pah, I say.

Oh dear. Entire staff let go.

In the face of the studio's apparent closure, Politician reverts to type. Bemoans "all this violence in these games, all the sexism."

No wonder games are delayed so often. It appears finishing one opens the door for everyone getting fucking sacked.

It needed to sell three million copies in order to break even. That's fucking crazy for something which isn't a well-established IP.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012- ... break-even

That wasn't to break even on the cost of development. That was to enable the studio to break even given the costs of the MMO they're developing in parallel and the bizarre situation they were in regarding repaying loans from the state of Rhode Island.

Then again, they did pay R.A.Salvatore $1.45MM to write the plot/script. Which is frankly mental.

The more I read about the collapse of the studio the more I feel really bad for them. More screens from the MMO. Shilling is utterly correct in his comments on Chafee's political point scoring and desperation in saving his own hide.

Sounds more like Chafee couldn't justify squandering any more taxpayers' money to the Rhode Island public, in all honesty.

They're in New England, it's Curt Schilling... it's an easy sell!!! Do what the sporting man wants!