Oh yeah. I really liked Gabriel Knight games (even the third one), so while I haven't backed her Kickstarter, I've tried to play Moebius after it was released. I don't recommend it to anyone. Horrible 3D, really unlikable protagonist, and gameplay somehow combined both bad old-school and current generation bits. Also, watching too much Sherlock rots one's brain.
Funny, even in 90s I couldn't really say that BS series had awesome graphics. The Last Express, on the other hand...
I don't think it's a question of today being terribly worse to make a game than it was on the 90's (if you aren't on the AAAs business that is). To make an AGS game today, is probably alot easier than it was at that time with the clumsy tools and technology. The problem is that the Coles were out of the touch with the gamming industry itself for all this time (at least from their fan base) and this hurt them badly.
I didn't say that its impossible for a small team to make a good game, and I've played Heroine's Quest, which proves the point. My point was that when they were active developers for Sierra, their products were AA-level titles of that time. But AAA now and AA back then are two very different beasts. And, well, it looks like they still wanted to make not just an old-school QfG4 sequel (with which most of the fans would have been completely satisfied) but to try and make at least A-level game. Sadly, they were out of touch with gaming for too long. I just hope all this situation will end well for them.
I actually found Malachi unlikable in a likable way. And I could deal with the generally at best meh animations (and Malachi's freaky armpits) if it weren't for the insanely shitty walking animation (of the protagonist, no less; somehow the others were all much less offensive to the eye). What bothers me most, though, is that, as is usual these days, you can't really fail at anything. (It does however have nice death scenes that don't feel artificial.) The game would be so much better if you had to suffer small penalties when you analyzed something or someone incorrectly. And the only time it didn't annoy the hell out of me when the game said "you can't pick this item up now, but you will indeed need it later" was the pole. All in all, I liked Cognition much more, hilarious glitches throughout and lack of the procedural stuff in the later parts that made the earlier ones stand out aside, but I wouldn't call Moebius terrible by any means, as, silly premise taken in stride, at least it's well-written (and the backgrounds are fine).
indeed. interest--
Poor out-of-touch Coles. They just don't know what they don't know.Corey Cole said:Love, Hate, and Women in Gaming
We have been very disturbed by the degree of hate towards indie game developers, and women developers and players in particular, on many web sites. Personally I think it comes from jealousy – The commenters want the publicity and success of the game developers without devoting the years of 60 hour weeks that it takes to build a game.
Unfortunately, a lot of this has come across in the form of hate towards women. This isn’t new – Roberta Williams got hate mail for featuring Rosella as the main character in King’s Quest IV – but it is just plain wrong. Games can be fun with either a male or a female protagonist as long as the story reflects that choice. Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a male Slayer? Boring!
Lori wrote about why we decided on a male character for the first Hero-U game at http://www.hero-u.net/leaders/why-shawn-isnt-shawna/. I assure you that we will have female protagonists in future games and that we will ignore any resulting hate mail.We are proud of the strong female characters we created in previous games, and even more of the ones in Hero-U.
We have also proudly added our names to an anti-hate open letter on diversity in gaming and the game industry at https://medium.com/@andreaszecher/open-letter-to-the-gaming-community-df4511032e8a. We hope many of our backers will continue to speak out against hate and harassment in any form. This week I learned a new term - SJW or Social Justice Warrior - used negatively about people who harp about social justice in gaming and media. You know what? We'll wear that badge proudly. Our games have always been about heroism, and yes, that includes social justice.
"we hate quest for glory but please give us muniez because this will be quest for glory's spiritual successor"?thus quoth the kickstarter front page said:
They didn't switch engines exactly, they were using Unity since they tossed the McGuffin's Curse one away, so other parts of the game hopefully wouldn't need too much rewriting.
which is pretty darn stupid considering that both adventures and rpgs came about as adaptations of pnp rpgs to computers focusing on different things, and thus qfg, as a true hybrid, was pretty close to being the perfect translation since it united the two sides and did so pretty well to boot...
story not so much, atmosphere more like it, but one of the reasons for that was the adventure part of the hybrid. another reason why those games were well liked was the ability to solve puzzles in multiple ways in which your stats did play a role, but puzzles are typical adventure elements, so not sure how that would translate to their pure rpg vision....
