Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Beyond a Steel Sky - sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky from Revolution Software

Solid Snail

Learned
Joined
Oct 31, 2018
Messages
328
https://revolution.co.uk/games/beyond-a-steel-sky/




https://af.gog.com/game/beyond_a_steel_sky?as=1649904300

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/beyond-a-steel-sky-1203171285/

‘Beyond a Steel Sky’ Is a Sequel to Classic ’90s ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’

Revolution Software’s 1994 adventure game “Beneath a Steel Sky” is getting a sequel, the game developer announced during Monday’s Apple keynote.

No, it’s not “Beneath a Steel Sky 2,” but “Beyond a Steel Sky.” It will find lead designer and Revolution head Charles Cecil and artist Dave Gibbons teaming up once more to bring the cyberpunk adventure to life.

The sequel will be a sight different from the original game, however. It will feature fully 3D environments that empower players with full control of the camera, as well as a new comic book-inspired aesthetic that’s meant to help embody the “spirit” of adventure gaming.

Beyond a Steel Sky” will retain the first game’s protagonist, engineer Robert Foster, and will explore society viewed through the lens of social control and privacy as enacted by the omniscient AI created by Foster by the end of “Beneath a Steel Sky.” The sequel will explore how living under a watchful AI can be both beneficial and detrimental to society, as well as Orwellian ideas and issues it may struggle with from time to time.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Patron
Joined
Oct 20, 2015
Messages
1,261
Location
Uwotopia
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
At this rate I expect a developer from buttfuck nowhere to announce the next Krondor game by the end of this year.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Footage and screenshot from Apple Arcade announcement:

(time stamped)



Apple-introduces-apple-arcade-beyond-a-steel-sky-03252019_big_carousel.jpg



I wonder it means this is an Apple exclusive game?
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
This is not an Apple exclusive.



Interview: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/beyond-a-steel-sky-beneath-a-steel-sky-sequel-1203171160/

Inside ‘Beyond a Steel Sky,’ the ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’ Sequel (EXCLUSIVE)

Beneath a Steel Sky,” the cult 1994 adventure game, is getting a sequel, UK-based game developer Revolution Software announced at Monday’s Apple keynote in Cupertino, California.

The project sees a return of the creative duo behind the original: lead designer and head of Revolution Charles Cecil, and comics artist Dave Gibbons, best-known for collaborating with Alan Moore on the seminal graphic novel “Watchmen.” But while the original’s cyperpunk point-and-click puzzle-solving has fallen out of favor in the intervening decades, its creators say that the sequel – dubbed “Beyond a Steel Sky” – will take a far different approach to how the player interacts with its gleaming metal spires and twisted towers.

“We very deliberately decided not to call it ‘Beneath a Steel Sky 2,’” says Cecil. “For one thing, people associate it with that point-and-click style. For another thing, we want people to be able to approach this game without even having heard of the original. It’s a continuation of both the themes and story, but we find that the themes are more important.”

“That’s a thing I see in comics all the time,” echoes Gibbons. “When you respect the continuity, you make all the fans happy, and that’s good, but it keeps out all the new people. It’s a real problem at times. With ‘Beyond,’ we’re trying to make a game that people who maybe weren’t even alive in 1994 can appreciate. If you’ve played the original, it will enrich the experience, but it isn’t absolutely necessary.”

In accordance with more modern approaches to the adventure genre exhibited by “walk-’em-ups” like “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture,” Cecil says that “Beyond” will feature fully 3D environments that the player can stroll through and interact with, with full camera control. Gibbons takes great pains to note that the studio has developed an entirely new tool to facilitate a comic-book aesthetic while still taking advantage of this newfound depth and technology. While Cecil isn’t comfortable talking more specific than that just yet, he says that the team’s goal is to embody the spirit of the adventure games that put them on the map, such as their lengthy “Broken Sword” series, emphasizing that the non-violent nature of the genre has allowed the studio to garner a diverse fanbase broader than that of more traditional action games.

01.png


Despite the duo’s stated goal of producing a work that stands apart from its well-known predecessor, “Beyond” stars the returning protagonist of the original game, a small-time engineer named Robert Foster. While “Beneath” dealt with the rampant sentience and breakdown of a “Neuromancer”-esque AI called LINC that haunted an entire city, Cecil and Gibbons say that its follow-up will deal with more pressing questions of social control and privacy under the watchful eye of the supposedly-benevolent, omniscient artificial-intelligence that Foster installed at the conclusion of the first game. In particular, Cecil describes how an AI might view the ideal human society by referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a famous triangle-shaped construct in sociology that attempts to explain how the fundamental needs of human beings build off each other. Since an AI would ostensibly follow all those rules as consistently as possible, it would rigidly adhere to that hierarchy at all times, even when it might seem counterproductive.





“You look at something like a social credit system, for example,” says Cecil. “Now, us in the West look at those kinds of systems, and we think of them as particularly Orwellian, very scary stuff. But when you look at some of the data, you’ll find that some of these systems are surprisingly popular. And when you ask them why, they say things like, ‘well, it means that people have an incentive not to litter, to act more orderly in society.’ To an AI that tries to view these things ‘objectively,’ that sort of system makes a lot of sense. The entire game is about how an AI would look at human society and try to make it into a utopia, and what might happen because of that.”

02.png


Throughout our interview, Cecil repeatedly references George Orwell’s classic work “1984” as a major touchstone for this upcoming game’s themes. But as Cecil himself admits, while Orwell’s work gave a vocabulary to the sophisticated spin-techniques that would spring from the decades that followed, the totalitarian doom-state that Orwell described has only materialized in select countries, and often for limited periods of time. Instead, he points to another dystopian work as a source of inspiration, Terry Gilliam’s cult 1985 film “Brazil,” which depicts the byzantine world of bureaucracy as flashy and absurd in its inherent nihilism. Cecil says that the anarchic tone of the film helped him inject the signature dashes of humor in “Beneath,” a major part of its lasting charm. Though the two creators admit that building a game around these ever-relevant issues might invite some controversy, they say they’re trying to ladle them in as thoughtfully as possible.

“We’re trying to reflect society without making too many judgments,” Cecil says. “This isn’t supposed to be an extremely political work or anything, but it does deal with these social issues. It’s the most ambitious game that we’ve ever written at Revolution, for sure, but it’s not trying to push any agenda. Rather, we want to explore them.”

“I’m certainly not trying to write a political tract,” Gibbons says, laughing. “More of an interesting story.”

As the two developers continue to work on the hotly-anticipated game – which has been rumored for quite a while now – they marvel back on the singular impact that “Beneath” has had on their careers, even 25 years later. For Gibbons, as a creator who usually works in another medium, the most striking difference between the two experiences is the level of tech involved. As he recalls, the studio in York didn’t even really have internet back in the early ‘90s. “Being able to post something in Slack and get instant feedback is just so much better,” he says. “It’s like night and day.”

03.png


According to Cecil’s recollection, when Microsoft introduced Windows 98, “Beneath” ceased functioning on many computers, but the studio was too wrapped up in the development of the first “Broken Sword” game to pay too much notice. It was only after a computer science student named Ludvig Strigeus unveiled a piece of software known as ScummVM in 2001 that allowed enthusiasts to play their aging adventure games on a modern-day PC that the game experienced a second wave of interest. Cecil attributes the decision to make “Beneath” available as a free download in 2003 as one of the core reasons why so many people continue to clamor for a sequel. “It was the only game that a lot of people knew about that was free at the time,” he says. “We weren’t trying to, but we got a lot of interest.” For those fans, Cecil says he’s glad that they’re finally going to be able to fulfill those wishes – he just hopes the game can live up to the now-mounting hype.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Beneath a Steel Sky is one of my favourite adventure games, and while I'm curious about the sequel, I'm kinda disappointed about the artstyle of this game. It seems too happy, and Beneath a Steel Sky was anything but happy. I'm crossing my fingers, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Also, shouldn't this thread be in Adventure gaming?
 
Last edited:

jfrisby

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
491
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I think Dave Cummins (RIP) probably did the best bits of design on all those early Revolution games. The mystery for me is how Charles Cecil has kept the company afloat all these years.. he must be from a wealthy family or something?
 

agentorange

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2012
Messages
5,256
Location
rpghq (cant read codex pms cuz of fag 2fa)
Codex 2012
I'm sure there would be a way to move the game into 3D and still retain the bleak, industrial style of the original, but this is not doing that. Looks awful. The notion that because the backgrounds of the original game were hand drawn, and because the game featured a comic book like intro, that a 3D adaptation would have to necessarily be cell shaded and go for an overblown cartoon look is misguided. Especially when they get basic things like the color palette complete wrong, colors in those screenshots are far too garish, whereas the original used a really nice muted set of colors that fit its dystopian world so well, the areas looked smog ruined and sad, whereas the areas in these new screenshots look like plastic mcdonalds toys.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
I think Dave Cummins (RIP) probably did the best bits of design on all those early Revolution games. The mystery for me is how Charles Cecil has kept the company afloat all these years.. he must be from a wealthy family or something?

He was pretty ahead of the curve with porting the Broken Sword to other platforms. The director's cut of the first game released on Nintendo Wii and DS in 2009, then on iPhone and iPad in 2010. I think Revolution later did the same with updating BS2 with a director's cut.

The BS series has also been on GOG since its early days in 2008/2009 and on Steam since 2010 or so. Plus it helps that Revolution Software owns rights to all their games (I think?), so they get a higher cut of the revenue.
 
Last edited:

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
BS5 was fine, but this is probably gonna be shit. I dislike the 3rd person walking simulator aspect already. I guess next to come are sokoban puzzles. Also, like all cheap shovelware released today, it looks like a mobile game.
And where is Joey? I bet if he's in they're gonna make him shit.
Meh.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
Charles Cecil as a lead designer and writer is a hack, as proven by the latter games he made. Dave Cummins was probably the main reason those early revolution games were good and he was the main force behind BASS. Sadly, as it turns out he is dead. So yeah, I don't think there's a chance this gonna be good.

At least we have an excellent spiritual sequel, Primordia.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom