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Interview Jagged Alliance 3D post mortem interview

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,044
Tags: Jagged Alliance 3D

<a href=http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7169>Remember the Jagged Alliance 3D drama</a>? As you may know it eventually ended with the cancellation of the game. <a href=http://www.ag.ru>AG</a> has asked both parties - Vitaly Shutov, GFI's head of PC product development, and Richard Therrien, VP product development of SFI - <a href=http://www.ag.ru/articles/interviews/jagged_alliance_3d/3743>some questions</a> to clarify the situation:
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<blockquote><b>There is a rumor that MiST land proposed a very drastic re-imagination of Jagged Alliance in a first version of the JA3D design document — it was more of a traditional RTS game, complete with large battlefields, light armored vehicles and artillery. Later, some of the ideas surfaced in another MiST land's game — Warfare. Can you either shoot down this rumor or confirm it?</b>
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VS: Yes, we planned to have long-range artillery, but it would be available only to enemy forces. They would be able to launch a strike if the player had failed to destroy artillery in an adjacent sector before taking on a next mission. We wanted playable tanks and some other vehicles. But we, as trite as it sounds, didn't have enough resources to pull that off, because it's really hard to realize this kind of stuff in a game where everything can be broken, destroyed or razed. That's why these ideas were saved for Jagged Alliance 3.
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RT: I don't remember having been approached with a RTS model for JA3D. This is something they may have discussed internally and apparently did since they later came out with some sort of real-time version.
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<u>The idea that did come up was to have a 'smart pause' system fairly early on and MiST land's argument was that the game needed to evolve</u>. To this I had to apply my veto, as I did not and do not want to have multiple Jagged Alliance games with different tactical rules and since the turn-based system of JA is not broken, I would rather build on it.</blockquote>Needed to evolve? Motherfuckers.
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<blockquote>It is not unusual when a new developer gets to work on a known game system or franchise for them to tend to steer its essence in another direction. I guess this is one way of appropriating the project, marking it with one's own touch. It is probably a challenge too to deliver something that would outdo the original making it a different beast in the process.</blockquote><a href=http://www.bethsoft.com/>Indeed</a>.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPG Dot</A>
 

FrancoTAU

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
2,507
Location
Brooklyn, NY
Did I hallucinate or was it this board that first pointed out Dev Diaries of JA3 (not JA 3D) saying it was going to be RTS and than whammo! It got pulled from Mistland.

Oh well, it sounded like the game was going to be shit anyways. I just hope Strategy First finds a way to stay in business.
 

Mr. Teatime

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 25, 2003
Messages
365
You can't expect much shipping it off to a shitty russian developer that's only ever made crap games. SF can't take the moral high ground here - they did it coz the devs were cheap.
 

GhanBuriGhan

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2005
Messages
1,170
Mr. Teatime said:
You can't expect much shipping it off to a shitty russian developer that's only ever made crap games. SF can't take the moral high ground here - they did it coz the devs were cheap.

Which just goes to show how expensive "cheap" can be.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,044
Life of a gamer is a journey from one disappointment to another.
Confucius.
 

Andyman Messiah

Mr. Ed-ucated
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
Messages
9,933
Location
Narnia
What's not to like about a game the developers didn't even seem to enjoy making in the first place? It would have been fun seeing the result. :)
 

Andyman Messiah

Mr. Ed-ucated
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
Messages
9,933
Location
Narnia
Didn't play it actually, but to me it was was dead already after I played MOO2. I liked it and never even thought of a sequel. There just wasn't any need for one, and from what I heard about MOO3 all they really did was enhance the graphics, which actually sounds like bullshit to me. Still, I did like the spiritual successor Galactic Civilizations (2?).

But for Jagged Alliance, I really wanted a sequel. I can't exactly specify why, but probably because I can't play JA2 on my XP (unlike MOO2) and was kind of hoping for a replacement, if a bit (or very) vague. I was a hopeful (or naive) lad when it came to JA3, I suppose. :wink:
 

Jason

chasing a bee
Joined
Jun 30, 2005
Messages
10,737
Location
baby arm fantasy island
Fuckers. I was actually looking forward to it.
GFI is still planning to release NotJA3D, just under a different name, obviously, and with all the JA related elements (plot links, names, etc) removed. Also, SFI is still planning to do JA3 with another developer.
 

Voss

Erudite
Joined
Jun 25, 2003
Messages
1,770
Locue said:
But for Jagged Alliance, I really wanted a sequel. I can't exactly specify why, but probably because I can't play JA2 on my XP (unlike MOO2) :

Really? I can.

And moo3 was really bad. I dislike constantly fighting with an AI that changes my decisions. And the battle system was too sluggish to be fun, and to fast to be tactical. (The first volley of missiles usually decided a battle).

'Course, I hated the GalCivs as well, so I've been shit out of luck for a good space strategy game.

This, I'm glad was cancelled. So much crap. Nostalgia franchising doesn't work well. A lesson I hope bethesda learns the hard way.
 

jiujitsu

Cipher
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
1,444
Project: Eternity
Vault Dweller said:
"It is not unusual when a new developer gets to work on a known game system or franchise for them to tend to steer its essence in another direction. I guess this is one way of appropriating the project, marking it with one's own touch. It is probably a challenge too to deliver something that would outdo the original making it a different beast in the process."

<a href=http://www.bethsoft.com/>Indeed</a>.

Lawl, more evidence for my analysis of VD. :lol:
 

don_tomaso

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 9, 2006
Messages
292
Just a little side-question:

Has anyone played JA1 recently?
I havent played it for like 7-8 years, and Im thinking of replaying it but Im a bit scared. I mean, maybe it sucks and then all my lovley memories of it will be crushed (in TB, of course)..

So what do you think? Is it worth a replay?
 

FrancoTAU

Cipher
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
2,507
Location
Brooklyn, NY
I've never had that experience before. It always seems like nostalgia wins out even if the game doesn't stand the test of time.
 

don_tomaso

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 9, 2006
Messages
292
Hm well I dont know about that, when I replayed syndicate it sucked, and I loved it when it was new.
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,751
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Well, I'm sorry to say it, but I had this experience exactly with JA1. I don't know why, I can still play Electro Man or Prince of Persia... But JA2 is still great for me!
 

don_tomaso

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 9, 2006
Messages
292
yeah thats what I thought, I replay JA2 about every other year, and Im still loving it, but when Im looking at screens of JA1 it just looks so darn dated, hehe.. So maybe I should just leave it in its grave
 

FatalFailure

Novice
Joined
Sep 13, 2006
Messages
14
Voss said:
Locue said:
But for Jagged Alliance, I really wanted a sequel. I can't exactly specify why, but probably because I can't play JA2 on my XP (unlike MOO2) :

Really? I can.

*snip*

I can't either. Any suggestions on how to get it to work? (Dosbox, settings, whatever)

Ya know, this just gets me to thinking... there's all these older games I'm just going to have to build a win95-98 machine just to get running again because too many of the recent American PC games just don't cater to my taste at all. I still miss X-Com (I play it occasionally on ps1 since I can't get it running in xp), JA1&2, MoO and MoM, and a few others... *sigh*
 

LaDoushe

Scholar
Joined
Jan 28, 2006
Messages
127
Locue said:
But for Jagged Alliance, I really wanted a sequel. I can't exactly specify why, but probably because I can't play JA2 on my XP (unlike MOO2)

You can play JA2 on XP, especially with the high-res 1.13 mod at Bear Pit forums http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi. I've found that this really revitalizes the game, through improving the AI, interface and a number of other little fixes. Add to this Urban Chaos and JA is good to go for a long while. UC is really amazing, as it has probably five or six times the red shirts as vanilla JA2, and almost entirely urban sectors. Try it, people.

Edit-
Oh yeah, Right Click, properties, compatibility, check box - run under win95.
 

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