Wadjet Eye Old Skies - time travel adventure game from Wadjet Eye, now 2D again

[Dodo1610]

The first real screenshots

Spoiler

The backgrounds look fantastic, though the characters could use more details so they don't stick out from the background as much, but I think the style itself can work if it's well animated.
Also, it seems there are multiple protagonists from different ages since this is a time travel story: two people from the future? a hippie from the 70s and a girl from the 20, which probably means there are at least 3 different worlds to travel to.

Seems like things are finally moving forward for Dave when you look at what he posted only 3 months ago.

 

[V_K]

I'm uncharacteristically bothered by the 20s girl flat ass. It just looks like the sprite was awkwardly cut from another picture.

 

[Tom Selleck]

that hippie girl is 6'3", 220lbs

 

[HoboForEternity]

that hippie girl is 6'3", 220lbs

that's my fetish.

seriously

 

[Boleskine]

 

[MRY]

i like the first one. looks kinda like early 90s anime

looks like the early broken sword games, which is a great style (much better than nu broken sword) *if* you can also pull off the fluidity of animations, which is the hardest part I think.

Seems pretty good!

 

[Infinitron]

During a devstream of Old Skies, I spontaneously decided to show a prototype of an earlier version of the game. Back in 2019, we hubristically thought we could make Old Skies in 3D and in Unity. After two months of frustration and hair-pulling, we confessed to each other that we weren't enjoying working on it at all. So we decided to cut our losses and switch back to traditional 2D in AGS before we got completely burnt out.

All that remains of that ill-fated project are these eight minutes of gameplay. Enjoy.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I dont even know if there is any good 3d adventure game outside of grim fandango(which visuals still hold today). Other 3d adventure games have been traumatizing for me like monkey island 4 or broken sword 4.

If you count something like the council maybe it counts and i loved the council.

 

[WallaceChambers]

I dont even know if there is any good 3d adventure game outside of grim fandango(which visuals still hold today). Other 3d adventure games have been traumatizing for me like monkey island 4 or broken sword 4.

If you count something like the council maybe it counts and i loved the council.

Do you mean in terms of control/playability or ones you would just consider good personally? Because idk which games you actually like but there are plenty that play fine. Or at the very least don't have the issues of early 3D games like MI4 or BS4.

Sam & Max Beyond Space and Time and Sam & Max The Devils Playhouse are two of my favorite adventure games.

 

[Neuromancer]

I dont even know if there is any good 3d adventure game outside of grim fandango(which visuals still hold today).

I really wonder, why so many people call Grim Fandango (and also Monkey Island 4) a 3D adventure, when it's actually not.
Maybe the reason is, that compared to prior LucasArts games it uses a different graphic style and mostly prerendered graphics. And the direct keyboard control instead of point & click in other adventure games may confuse people as well.

But technically the game just uses flat 2D backgrounds with some 3D models thrown in.
And that type of graphics - sometimes called 2 1/2D - is very common for adventures of the last 20 years.
One of many examples is The Longest Journey from '99.

The control scheme is also nothing special. It had been used in many 2D games (adventure & other) before and after.
I remember that in Syberia 2 you could switch between normal mouse point & click and direct control via game controller or keyboard. The remaster of Grim Fandango did this as well.

 

[Prime Junta]

I dont even know if there is any good 3d adventure game outside of grim fandango(which visuals still hold today). Other 3d adventure games have been traumatizing for me like monkey island 4 or broken sword 4.

If you count something like the council maybe it counts and i loved the council.

Heaven's Vault is very good. Worst thing about it are the bits that aren't 3D, viz. the hand-drawn character art awkwardly stuck into the 3D scenes.

It's quite offbeat for an adventure game though, those don't usually have that level of C&C and replayability.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Dodo1610]

Dialogue footage



Timetravel disguise

 

[Boleskine]

Happy 15th anniversary to Dave and WEG.



We forgive you for abandoning Adventure Codex right after Unavowed came out and the level of criticism here, compared to the near universal praise elsewhere, made you uncomfortable.

It's strange that before that point, when the feedback was generally more positive, Dave had otherwise been okay with (or oblivious to) how toxic the Codex is!

Spoiler

But anyway, I'm glad Dave did his thing and Wadjet Eye exists. Dave's most important legacy is probably inspiring a whole new generation of adventure game writers and designers.

 

[Curratum]

I did buy every Wadjet Eye before the Unavowed, but honestly I didn't really like the games Wadjet developed. However, I am grateful for the handful of outstanding titles by third party devs they published.

 

[MRY]

Dave still reads the Codex and in a tweet described it as, in effect, his auriga whispering, “Memento you suck,” even during his triumphal parade. I'm sure he is grateful(?) that the whispers continue even today!

Pretty sure he cut back posting not because of negative reviews of his games but because of posts mocking his longtime friend Hepler and fatigue/disgust over the "edgy" stuff. You're right that there has always been an element of that, but it surged during a period when other sites became much more heavily moderated and many people banned from other sites migrated here and flaunted their newfound freedom. I suspect that’s what has caused other developers to stop posting, though perhaps they would put up with it for fanboyism. I don’t know.

Even if you don’t like Dave’s design approach,* he created a lot of opportunities—not just by publishing but by trailblazing a path for viable commercial AGS products (Fatman was commercial but not in a viable way). And Dave got there by taking risks, hustling, networking, and community building. I think it's pretty telling that he has such strong support from players, other developers, mainstream press, and conference organizers. You don't always see all those factions coming together. Finally, I'll note that he accomplished all that while building a family. Nobody's perfect, but Dave's 15-year track record is very impressive and worth celebrating.

(* He and I differ on design philosophies quite a bit, to say the least.)

 

[Boleskine]

Dave announced Jennifer Hepler would co-write the game with him in August 2015. Codex reactions with comments from Dave followed. He posted over 50 times in the Unavowed thread from 2016-2018. He took the skepticism and concerns about "dumbing down" the game in good stride it seems.

I don't recall any major surge in edgy posting. The gamergate thread has been around since mid-2014, and there was plenty of similar commentary in the years before that. I can't say how much if at all Dave browsed outside of the adventure subforum, but he certainly knew what the Codex was like. Dave was okay with the broader culture here because the adventure community provided him mostly positive feedback, and he saw the forum as a reliable place to post small updates and engage with paying customers in a relatively niche genre.

Then Unavowed came out and the mixed reaction here starkly contrasted with the near unanimous praise at most other outlets and forums. By that point Dave didn't really need to justify or defend his creative decisions given the creative and commercial success of Unavowed. He says so himself in those tweets.

There are forums out there with multi-page threads dedicated to how much I suck.

There are some forums with multi page threads dedicated to how much I suck. I used to feel the need to “defend myself.” Now I figure it isn’t worth engaging.

IMO, having to describe a discussion thread as merely being "dedicated to how much I suck" reveals that the reception here to Unavowed did bother him. It's akin to dismissing a subset of critics as "haters" so as to justify ignoring the feedback and remaining in the warmer comforts of the positive receptions elsewhere. "Everyone else mostly loves the game, why not those guys? They just want to say I suck." Of course, I'm not saying Dave was obligated to respond to anything or arguing how valid or reasonable the criticism was.

Point is, Dave didn't leave because he was bothered by comments about Hepler - those comments arose 3 years before his departure, which was right after Unavowed released. He left because the ball-washing wasn't what it used to be.

 

[MRY]

Here's the post that preceded Dave's last one, and Dave's last one:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...urban-fantasy-game.99401/page-17#post-5751519
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...urban-fantasy-game.99401/page-17#post-5752003

For obvious reasons, I'm not quoting them. Anyway, I'm not going to belabor the point.

 

[Boleskine]

This is anecdotal, but as someone who has lurked the Codex since roughly 2007, I would say that there was a marked influx of shitposters right around 2014. Codex was always "edgy" and in your face, but it became much more characterized by political and chauvinist posters roughly around that time. Most of them tend to stay out of the Adventure sub-forum (or GRPG for that matter), but there are still a few posters here that are more interested in posting their inane culture wars bullshit than they are in discussing adventure games. I don't know why said influx occurred, but I think it's disingenuous to say the Codex of 2021 isn't any less of a shithole than the Codex of 2010; the Codex has declined considerably.

I mentioned the GG thread that started in 2014, but really the entire gaming industry became more heavily politicized and infused with a "culture war" around 2012-2014. The increased frequency of those discussions on the Codex didn't necessarily reflect an underlying shift in the forum's culture of 'almost anything goes'. The gaming subforums for the most part remain focused on gaming, with the culture war stuff relegating to Gaming Drama or General Discussion.

The only disingenuous comments here are claims that Dave stopped posting not because of negative feedback but because of comments about his friend/co-writer or general edge fatigue, or that one particular shitpost (after a week of mixed reactions to Unavowed) was the primary reason.

Here are comments about Hepler in August 2015 that did not stop Dave from coming back a year later to discuss Unavowed's progress for two more years until the game's release. (Spoiler'd to save space, not to protect the easily offended)

Spoiler

She was also responsible for a large part of the story for the wreck that is DA2, and doesn't even like games except for storyfag reasons.

Also she's a former biowarian... brrr.

She's not even hot that her comments on rpgs could be excused as the musings of a silly put pretty women.

Bad move hiring her.

Well Hepler is known for her opinions such as that we need games designed by "people who don't like games" to make the product appeal to women, ignorant musings about dead white men who need to make space for :incloosive: writers, and working on shitty games.

Jennifer Hepler is a symbol of everything that's wrong with modern gaming. Even if this game will be The Best Thing Ever, she will cost you a lot of sales.

These posts were made after Dave's last post that month. If Dave was still lurking the thread and forum then these comments also didn't inhibit his resumption of posting in August 2016.

Spoiler

Jen "Hamburger" Helpler announced as co writer: Codex bad memories of Dragon Age 2 come back to mind, the fear, the horror causes emotional reaction, a gut feeling that something terrible is about to happen and we lose Dave Gilbert to badly written creepy romances and Mexican soap operas.

Regardless of Hepler writing for a genre of games that she doesn't care about it's still undeniably true that she's a horrible writer who's only passion seems to lie in writing about fuccboi romances. Face it, lady, you're never going to be Anne Rice.

Hamburger helper writing urban fantasy sounds like a dream. It competes only with steampunk for legbeard heavan.

I'm sorry, I like Wadjet Eye games and all that, but praising Hamburger Helper and the execrable school of nu-Bioware game design just made me not want to watch that presentation at all.

Dave has every right to post or not post wherever he pleases. If I were him I probably would have not spent time and energy trying to understand the Codex's reaction while gaming outlets and other forums were heaping praise upon me. The revisionism is amusing since Dave even tweeted he left because of negativity towards him and his games. The sudden epiphany of this nefarious agenda that such threads exist solely to discuss his level of suckitude also provided a nice cover in case Dave's peers in the gaming industry were to probe why he spent a few years posting on a notoriously toxic forum. He was okay with the forum's culture as long as the feedback was mostly positive. When the tide turned, he left (which is fine). Simple as that.

-----

Now that's settled, I am looking forward to hearing more about Old Skies.

 

[Boleskine]

Hah, not that any further clarification was needed, but as it turns out Dave doesn't have an issue with edgy humor after all!

 

[fantadomat]

Even if you don’t like Dave’s design approach,*

Which one? He have some great games and some shitty ones.

 

[HorribleHombre]

All the ones he's made himself (Shivah, Blackwell, Unavowed) have similar designs: talk to people, discover clues, talk some more, maybe guess someone's password/code. Go someplace in New York.

 

[fantadomat]

All the ones he's made himself (Shivah, Blackwell, Unavowed) have similar designs: talk to people, discover clues, talk some more, maybe guess someone's password/code. Go someplace in New York.

Sure,most games in the same genre generaly have similar design. That is why writing,setting and story matter that much in adventure games. They are all about going around,picking items,talking to people and doing some puzzles. Unavowed for example was huge decline compared to the others. That forced faggot shit was top tier garbage lol.

 

[almondblight]

IMO, having to describe a discussion thread as merely being "dedicated to how much I suck" reveals that the reception here to Unavowed did bother him. It's akin to dismissing a subset of critics as "haters" so as to justify ignoring the feedback and remaining in the warmer comforts of the positive receptions elsewhere. "Everyone else mostly loves the game, why not those guys? They just want to say I suck." Of course, I'm not saying Dave was obligated to respond to anything or arguing how valid or reasonable the criticism was.

Yeah, that attitude rubs me the wrong way as well. I don't think there's anything wrong with anyone who avoids the Codex - there are a lot of needlessly edgy posters here, and I can imagine avoiding the place leads to a healthier mindset for a lot of folks. But to read a thread that's a mix of edgy criticism, praise, and earnest criticism that people put effort into and dismissing the whole thing as simply being about "how much I suck" seems overly close-minded. There's a difference between avoiding a place because of the edgy comments some members make and using the edgy comments to dismiss everything that's said.

 

[Dodo1610]

New screens