Bubbles
I'm forever blowing
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 7,817
Well, let's see what we have here. Promotional material is still sparse, even though the game goes into Early Access on July 28th. The devs are coming off a miserably failed Kickstarter; maybe the EA version will be more attractive to gamers. This is straight from their website, because I'm lazy:
Setting:
Here's a gameplay video from last year. It's quite outdated, but it's the most recent gameplay footage I could find:
It looks like a hybrid of playing cards and traditional combat. More recent screenshots show off mechanics like morale and "crew affinity" meters and status effects, as well as some C&C and an art style that looks quite Banner Saga-ish:
We probably need to wait until the EA launch to know whether the game's any good, but the pitch sounds reasonably interesting.
And finally, the info the Codex is really interested in:
Gameplay:
- Story driven single-player game combining RPG with lite management elements
- Discover the stories of your settlement's characters along the North Sea coast
- Authentic historical setting
- Combat featuring turn-based tactics and cards
- Our first settlement will represent the Danes, and we will add more playable settlements and their cultures throughout Early Access
- We are planning to add:
- Mac and Linux support
- Multiplayer arena
- After selecting a culture and its playable settlement the player manages an annual cycle consisting of a two seasons:
- Summer is the sailing season, when a warband is selected and sent on a mission. This is the time to discover new locations, stories and trade.
- Winter is spent at the home settlement and is the season for planning and management decisions.
- Characters have fixed classes, roles and attributes. Roles are aligned to the characters' backgrounds - for example warrior, boat builder, hunter or priest. While character attributes and classes cannot be changed, it is possible to modify armour sets and weapons. As a character level up their health, endurance and disposition thresholds can be upgraded.
- Characters earn renown by completing their quest objectives, combat and trading.
- The seafaring game is real-time. There are seasons and day-night cycles.
- Tactical turn-based with cards
Setting:
The Great Whale Road is a video game set in a historical context. We have selected 650 AD because it is an interesting period of change in European history, and one often overlooked by popular culture (Beowulf aside). There are just enough sources available to create historical context and content, but also sufficient uncertainty to give us room for interpretation.
Joachim is a nearly fully trained historian (short of completing his master thesis 18 years or so ago), and we also had Belén, our history intern, review the literature for anything Joachim missed - ranging from general history of the period, trade and economic history, social history, art history, archaeology and even some palaeogeographical articles on early medieval coastal landscapes.
There are certain aspects of history which historians, archaeologists, geneticists, reenactors etc. do not agree on, and in these cases we go with what we think is most plausible and works best for the game. In the end (even historical) games are supposed to be fun.
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Steam Early Access will start with the Danes. In the mid to long-term we are planning to add more playable settlements. The second will be a village in Bernicia, representing the Angles in Northumbria.
- Story-driven quests for each playable settlement and main characters
- Early longships, trading ships and curraghs (Celtic skin boats)
- Historical locations and trade goods
- Unique champions for each culture
Here's a gameplay video from last year. It's quite outdated, but it's the most recent gameplay footage I could find:
It looks like a hybrid of playing cards and traditional combat. More recent screenshots show off mechanics like morale and "crew affinity" meters and status effects, as well as some C&C and an art style that looks quite Banner Saga-ish:
We probably need to wait until the EA launch to know whether the game's any good, but the pitch sounds reasonably interesting.
And finally, the info the Codex is really interested in:
Women: While Christianity has taken hold in most areas already, the typical morality and gender separation of later centuries is not yet dominant. This only changes during the high middle ages, but even then it is possible to find the occasional female warrior and leader. During our period the differentiation between free and unfree is often more important than the difference between male and female. That doesn't mean that every woman was a warrior, but that they had a strong and independent position in most of the societies in the game. Let's assume that most early medieval women could do more chin-ups than most men today.
LBGT: Sexuality is not one of the key topics covered by the available sources, in Christian texts it is usually bad and in sagas it is usually further down the list compared to naming as many people and relatives as possible as well as the description of drinking games and violence. Luckily there are archaeologists, and those folks have discovered quite a few graves which held an unusual mixture of goods. The conclusion is that some Germanic tribes were quite relaxed about the definition of gender, and that there were men defining themselves as women and vice versa. When even the Irish can vote for gay marriage, gamers should be able to deal with lesbian, gay and transgender characters too.
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