Editorial Daggerfall successor The Wayward Realms revealed to be mismanaged vaporware in post-mortem editorial

[taxalot]

What a familiar story.

 

[Elwro]

"The original composer for The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall came on board, and though he received practically no direction from the founders, he created over 20 minutes of quality music for the game, that was perfectly reminiscent of the original games, but in higher fidelity, of course. Other than myself, no-one else from the founders group even answered him, over the 2–3 months before I quit the project. I apologized, made excuses to him, and brought up the music a few more times during our weekly (or bi-monthly) meetings. I don’t think it was malicious on the parts of the others, I think it was just absent-mindedness, or perhaps apathy."

Jesus fucking Christ, the music for Daggerfall was amazing, they had this guy and just ignored him?

 

[Hobo Elf]

They needed Todd.

But Todd didn't need them, and was largely responsible for launching Bethesda into hyper stardom.

 

[Zeriel]

Spiritual successors need to die. Make something original already.

That's an even higher ask than expecting 40-50 year old developers to actually develop anything.

 

[CappenVarra]

dude sounds like a serial other-people's-sentence finisher, never a good sign

 

[Drowed]

Spiritual successors only work when they are done involuntarily - AKA, are not created or sold in that way. In this case, the developers just tried to create a good game, but the things they considered important/good for the game to be good coincided with the "spirit" of some old game and makes you remember it in a certain way. It can't be a process of pure imitation, it has to be a distinct creative processes that somehow evoke similar feelings for going in the same direction, but is not afraid to differentiate when he believes it is necessary.

On the point, Underrail totally could have been sold as a "spiritual successor of Fallout". The game is not that in any way, it goes far beyond that and has fundamental differences, but at the same time I need to recognize that Underrail was the game that most scratched the itch of Fallout in recent decades when I played it. Speaking of other genres, Okami undoubtedly filled a void of games like Zelda when it was released, and filled it very well. And Spark the Electric Jester 2 emulates very well the Sonic Adventure games that are no longer made by Sega, despite the problems here and there (like the story, but all the stories of Sonic's games have always been shit, so technically they were faithful to it).

We probably have more similar cases, but these are the ones that occur to me now without thinking much about it.

 

[Tyranicon]

Spiritual successors need to die. Make something original already.

You make pixelated anime prostitute games.

And it will be such glorious incline that the whole of rpgcodex converts to weebery and I leave in complete and utter disgust over the damage I have wrought.

 

[Crolug]

So... spending virtual $12M they still didn't have would suffice to compete with actual $120M CDPR already spent on R&D of CP77? What could go wrong?

 

[Alienman]

Can't help than to laugh at the 8 million dollar fudge up. "We wanna compete with Cyberpunk". Double lol.

 

[Paul_cz]

So damn naive. It sounds like they never had a true vision holder, someone who would know exactly what game he wanted to make and was both able and willing to convince and force others to actually follow up on that vision and create. Instead if was just all up in the ether. Of course, making games virtually from home like that makes convincing people to do anything much harder.

 

[Curratum]

Imagine my immense shock!

 

[Turuko]

the fact that a pub was willing to toss them 8m is even more histerical

 

[Artyoan]

My general impression of Julian LeFay during that three hour long interview was the same as it reveals here. He has a great deal of trouble staying on topic or staying solidly focused on much of anything. He affords himself every opportunity to never have both feet in on a project like this, seeing as he's not engaging in it full time. And judging by how frequently he appears to be moving around actual jobs he likely couldn't focus on this one even if it were all he was doing professionally. He's an ideas guy with ideas that shift like the wind. Like building your foundation on quick sand. That he threw his power around makes it that much worse.

'Never meet your heroes' is less of an issue than simply accepting those peoples' limitations and shortcomings. There were red flags all over this project even at the beginning. So LeFay can ramble on with great ideas, so what? They were all humoring the fantasy of this being a legitimate project while acting out the reality knowing it never was. The author was deceiving himself and the effusive praise he gives these guys is completely undue. The business guy understood that, as when they were all together they still fucked around. The greedy ask for $12M was not only delusional per its comparison to ES6 and Cyberpunk but it was a dead giveaway that they weren't even on the same page of what the game was supposed to be.

 

[Nyast]

I look at Monomyth, child of single programmer worked part-time because of his day job. Arx/Ultima Underworld mix. Regular updates (video/image), new features, new enemies/environments/spells. Awesome yet affordable graphics. Guy is clearly talented, hard working and more then modder

Then I look at this shitshow. Lolcow

And then you look at Otherside and Underworld Ascendent which got like $8M of funding and..

Yeah, it could be worse. Way worse.

 

[RNGsus]

They should have just lent that Daggerfall Unity guy some of their time. But then he probably sized them up and decided they were creepy losers.

 

[Skdursh]

I look at Monomyth, child of single programmer worked part-time because of his day job. Arx/Ultima Underworld mix. Regular updates (video/image), new features, new enemies/environments/spells. Awesome yet affordable graphics. Guy is clearly talented, hard working and more then modder


Then I look at this shitshow. Lolcow

Was Monomyth released? Still just says 2020 on Steam.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ah, 2020 keeps on 2020ing. Sad to hear about this.

Lol @ the people suggesting AI Dungeon as an example of good procedural gameplay. Really? The only example of good procedural gameplay today is Dwarf Fortress. Especially once it's completed, in the next 30-40 years.

So the choice is now between talentless hacks like Todd Howard who manage to shit out dull pos games like Fallout 4, and head-in-the-clouds hacks with good ideas but that couldn't shit out an actual game if someone used Todd Howard's tiny body as a human enema to purge them of their bullshit. We have indeed sunk low...

 

[Wysardry]

I have to wonder how much of this has been taken out of context. For example, Julian LeFay's suggestion to build the game with Unreal store-bought assets would make much more sense if he was referring to the prototype game.

I also don't have a great deal of respect for someone who has to tell everyone about a game before there is a design document, team or definite funding in place.

 

[Roguey]

For example, Julian LeFay's suggestion to build the game with Unreal store-bought assets would make much more sense if he was referring to the prototype game.

You think they were going to spend a bunch of money on temp assets instead of using placeholders like everyone normally does?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Richard Garriot showed that you can make a game with Unity Store Assets and free contributions from fans.

 

[Tyranicon]

For example, Julian LeFay's suggestion to build the game with Unreal store-bought assets would make much more sense if he was referring to the prototype game.

You think they were going to spend a bunch of money on temp assets instead of using placeholders like everyone normally does?

Unreal assets are dirt cheap. There's only two options here: you either have a big enough budget to use them as placeholders, or you shouldn't even bother with placeholders and keep them in the actual game.

It's not like anyone but unreal devs can tell anyways. You can get all the high-res, 3D asset kits to build an entire environ for 60 bucks. That's cheap even coming from me, who has no budget. Well, I spent my budget on smut mostly.

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/fantasy-and-medieval-artchitecture-kit

But that's besides the point because this project got nowhere because it's main contributors were IDEA GUYS™.

 

[mondblut]

Spiritual successors only work when they are done involuntarily - AKA, are not created or sold in that way. In this case, the developers just tried to create a good game, but the things they considered important/good for the game to be good coincided with the "spirit" of some old game and makes you remember it in a certain way. It can't be a process of pure imitation, it has to be a distinct creative processes that somehow evoke similar feelings for going in the same direction, but is not afraid to differentiate when he believes it is necessary.

"Spiritual successor" just means "we really want to make a sequel to this game, but the IP is out of our reach".

Fallout was a "spiritual successor" to Wasteland, ffs.

 

[ADL]

Everyone's mocking the whole 8M budget thing but there's an argument to be made that a procedurally generated, systems-driven RPG with a small budget is a smarter allocation of resources compared to a $100+ million content-driven RPG where everything is made by hand only to be experienced once.

Imagine if Dwarf Fortress or Kenshi had an eight million dollar budget.

 

[Tyranicon]

Everyone's mocking the whole 8M budget thing but there's an argument to be made that a procedurally generated, systems-driven RPG with a small budget is a smarter allocation of resources compared to a $100+ million content-driven RPG where everything is made by hand only to be experienced once.

Imagine if Dwarf Fortress or Kenshi had an eight million dollar budget.

Then Dwarf Fortress would actually have a usable UI.

I joke out of love, but also seriously, it needs a better interface. Too many damn windows/tabs.

 

[ADL]

Then Dwarf Fortress would actually have a usable UI.

I joke out of love, but also seriously, it needs a better interface. Too many damn windows/tabs.

The itch.io/steam release version appears to be consolidating some of those windows.

Looks nice