Game News Animation reel from cancelled Aliens: Crucible RPG discovered on Vimeo

[BobtheTree]

But can you romance the aliens?

No, the aliens romance you.

 

[Zeus]

Choosing between being fightie guy that fights and talkie guy that talks is primitive as fuck.

Don't forget hackie guy. He Bejeweles his way out of any situation.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I don't like them (visual novels) per se, but Torment would have been a flat-out better game without combat. MotB as well, I'm quite sure. And the less said about the KOTOR 2 combat debacle the better.

It would have been a better game with better combat.

The hypothetical "Torment the Visual Novel", that so many people here wish had existed, is a game that would never have been as popular as the Torment that we actually got. It would have been lost among all the other unappreciated "weird" 90s adventure games like Sanitarium, Zork Nemesis and Grim Fandango.

The game's mock imitation of Baldur's Gate's RPG mechanics, and the freedom those mechanics gave you, made the game greater than the sum of its parts.

Grim Fandango was less commercially successful than PS:T?

 

[Azrael the cat]

No, I mean Arcanum and Obsidian? Arcanum is Troika.

Yeah, I'm not saying Arcanum is an Obsidian game. I'm just surprised at all the backlash at the thought of an Aliens RPG that didn't hinge on combat.

Seems like an Aliens RPG that let you either fight Xenomorphs head on, or talk your way out of stuff (conning Weyland-Yutani NPCs?) would be cool. Better than having no choice but to mow down wave after wave of aliens, anyway.

Particularly because you couldn't have a game of fighting Xenomorphs without it turning into the kind of retardedness that we're already complaining about with Colonial Marines - except worse due to rpg mechanics encouraging some degree of tanking.

I talked about this in greater depth in a different thread (taking Camerons/Gibson's planned Alien3 script as a starting point), but a focus on investigating W-Y, allowing multiple equal threats (e.g. the risk of a W-Y capable of decimating planets using bioweapons developed from xenomporphs, a military leader that's decided all of these corporate shenanigans demand a military coup and he'll nuke any planet that gets in the way, and of course the xenomorphs themselves) would allow the xenomorphs to remain deadly 'avoid at all costs' enemies while providing for a good balance of detective work and combat ala the first half of Bloodlines.

 

[Roguey]

Grim Fandango was less commercially successful than PS:T?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango#Sales_and_aftermath

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-...-No-One-Played&p=117970&viewfull=1#post117970

We did sell-through around 400k worldwide on Torment. There seems to be an ongoing legacy that the game did very poorly at retail, which isn't true. It actually sold more copies than the Fallouts did.

Those aren't Final Fantasy numbers, but it certainly was profitable for the company.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Grim Fandango was less commercially successful than PS:T?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango#Sales_and_aftermath

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-...-No-One-Played&p=117970&viewfull=1#post117970

We did sell-through around 400k worldwide on Torment. There seems to be an ongoing legacy that the game did very poorly at retail, which isn't true. It actually sold more copies than the Fallouts did.

Those aren't Final Fantasy numbers, but it certainly was profitable for the company.

Fair enough - I knew that Black Isle (and the development side of Interplay generally) stayed profitable right to the bitter end, and was pulled under by the losses in the publishing division, but I didn't realise Torment sold as well as it did (although it almost comes to define the term 'long-seller').

 

[Larendav]

limited resources and perma-death.

Holy fuck, that sounds like pure . I take back what I said on the 1st page. I'm very interested now.

 

[Anthony Davis]

limited resources and perma-death.

Holy fuck, that sounds like pure . I take back what I said on the 1st page. I'm very interested now.

Thanks, but there is nothing to be interested in anymore.

That game video btw, it looks like a demo video we sent to Sega to show that the game mechanics (such as ordering teammates around) were working. I don't think that was a final level. Most of the gameplay stuff was complete or near complete. The art was not finished and its pretty clear in that level that lighting hadn't been finished either.

Oh well.