villain of the story
Arcane
If anyone from Full Control happens to be reading this, here's why I think your Kickstarter is full of suck and why I don't have a dime of trust in you:
None of you in the video look intellectually convincing and you literally look like a band of beggars. Because none of you seem to have a semblance of assertiveness to convince me that you know just what the fuck you are talking about and more importantly, what exactly you want. Instead, you look more like an excited ragtag of modders & fanfic writers and I doubt anything you would write could possibly match the smart hilarity of anything in JA series. From Ice Williams' annoying disposition to Reaper's you-can't-make-this-shit-up kind of fucked up lines, what it takes to get the general character and attitude of JA2, feels well beyond the mild and docile vibe you give off. The way you speak about JA2 is basically like this: "man, when I played JA2 for the first time, I was like, WHOA, you know what I'm talking about? Let's make a game like that and call it Jagged Alliance, yeah". As per one of my favourite quotes: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" and you certainly cannot explain it simply so naturally, I doubt if you understand what makes JA2 in the first place.
What can you do? Not give us talking mugshots of happy faces telling us how happy and grateful you are, for a start. All the stuff you mentioned in the updates: yes, you should have talked about them in the beginning with more conviction. Maybe after you talked about how and why you think JA games are such good games. Less face time, more history and elaboration with instructive pictures. JA is a niche and ambiguous expressions don't fill niches. Tell us about the bitch and tell us how you will nail her. Don't tell us that you're happy she gave a hot look in your direction.
About ambiguity: "Not dumbing down but improvements where needed" is a tale so fucking old, we don't even want to waste another second finding out where your own heart really lies. Stealth? What the fuck is wrong with stealth? Stealth in JA2 is fucking brilliant. Better than in almost any CRPG. You want to improve on it? You better go into details or not even touch on the subject. Cover? Do you even realize that the word "cover" is death sentence for old gamers? Maybe what you have in mind is good (and some of it seems to be), but you have a major problem communicating what it is.
Regardless of whether you are up to the task or not, I just hate the idea that you guys get to write a prequel of sorts to JA series, sort of an origin story of AIM and several old characters. Here's the thing: regardless of how good Flashback might turn out to be, it will never be considered a real JA game. Because the lineage is broken. You simply cannot get the essence of it, at least not without some of the original designers involved. Bethesda didn't and you most certainly won't. You are just a bunch of outsiders who have licensed the IP. That's like some random guy impregnating the royal prostitute that the king once fucked and claiming that the baby from you is the heir to the throne.
Also, LOS-based FOW is full of suck. Exploration is cool but that shit will only work on the first playthrough and will be a burden every time you play the game again, unless the world is randomised / procedurally generated but even then, not a good solution. What is a good solution? Not LOS-based FOW. If you have played JA2 enough times, with or without 1.13, you can more or less visualise what will work and what will not with relative ease. Can you imagine playing through JA2 several times, having to explore the maps you know time and again? My personal suggestion: give the general outline in FOW sans details like doors, windows, furniture and whatever debris there might be. And maybe completely blacked out FOW only at a very long distance. Very long. Will your maps be big enough to have very long distances?
And, mod tools / source. Probably not at release, given your resources but certainly at some point down the line. Without a community to back you up and fix and improve whatever stupid you put into the game, it won't survive long.
Also, managing several of your mercs in real-time is a fucking mess. It's a game of twitch. JA2 suffers from this. Make it RTwP outside combat.
None of you in the video look intellectually convincing and you literally look like a band of beggars. Because none of you seem to have a semblance of assertiveness to convince me that you know just what the fuck you are talking about and more importantly, what exactly you want. Instead, you look more like an excited ragtag of modders & fanfic writers and I doubt anything you would write could possibly match the smart hilarity of anything in JA series. From Ice Williams' annoying disposition to Reaper's you-can't-make-this-shit-up kind of fucked up lines, what it takes to get the general character and attitude of JA2, feels well beyond the mild and docile vibe you give off. The way you speak about JA2 is basically like this: "man, when I played JA2 for the first time, I was like, WHOA, you know what I'm talking about? Let's make a game like that and call it Jagged Alliance, yeah". As per one of my favourite quotes: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" and you certainly cannot explain it simply so naturally, I doubt if you understand what makes JA2 in the first place.
What can you do? Not give us talking mugshots of happy faces telling us how happy and grateful you are, for a start. All the stuff you mentioned in the updates: yes, you should have talked about them in the beginning with more conviction. Maybe after you talked about how and why you think JA games are such good games. Less face time, more history and elaboration with instructive pictures. JA is a niche and ambiguous expressions don't fill niches. Tell us about the bitch and tell us how you will nail her. Don't tell us that you're happy she gave a hot look in your direction.
About ambiguity: "Not dumbing down but improvements where needed" is a tale so fucking old, we don't even want to waste another second finding out where your own heart really lies. Stealth? What the fuck is wrong with stealth? Stealth in JA2 is fucking brilliant. Better than in almost any CRPG. You want to improve on it? You better go into details or not even touch on the subject. Cover? Do you even realize that the word "cover" is death sentence for old gamers? Maybe what you have in mind is good (and some of it seems to be), but you have a major problem communicating what it is.
Regardless of whether you are up to the task or not, I just hate the idea that you guys get to write a prequel of sorts to JA series, sort of an origin story of AIM and several old characters. Here's the thing: regardless of how good Flashback might turn out to be, it will never be considered a real JA game. Because the lineage is broken. You simply cannot get the essence of it, at least not without some of the original designers involved. Bethesda didn't and you most certainly won't. You are just a bunch of outsiders who have licensed the IP. That's like some random guy impregnating the royal prostitute that the king once fucked and claiming that the baby from you is the heir to the throne.
Also, LOS-based FOW is full of suck. Exploration is cool but that shit will only work on the first playthrough and will be a burden every time you play the game again, unless the world is randomised / procedurally generated but even then, not a good solution. What is a good solution? Not LOS-based FOW. If you have played JA2 enough times, with or without 1.13, you can more or less visualise what will work and what will not with relative ease. Can you imagine playing through JA2 several times, having to explore the maps you know time and again? My personal suggestion: give the general outline in FOW sans details like doors, windows, furniture and whatever debris there might be. And maybe completely blacked out FOW only at a very long distance. Very long. Will your maps be big enough to have very long distances?
And, mod tools / source. Probably not at release, given your resources but certainly at some point down the line. Without a community to back you up and fix and improve whatever stupid you put into the game, it won't survive long.
Also, managing several of your mercs in real-time is a fucking mess. It's a game of twitch. JA2 suffers from this. Make it RTwP outside combat.
