ELEX Pre-Release Thread

[himmy]

There's gotta be a tvtropes equivalent of post-apoc video games conspicuously placing skeletons as if they died during some noteworthy moment. It's lost all effect after seeing it done 5 times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovers_of_Valdaro

Literally older than dirt.

 

[T. Reich]

T. Reich u forget risen 1 had a rather long potion drinking animation. So it's not that different in practice.

I played all three games during winter-spring, and while - yes - the R1 potion drinking animation isn't super-fast (it's pretty close to G1-2 potion animation actually), but it's actually not a problem because you can jump, run and strafe during said animation. And it's basically not a problem at all to drink a potion or two during a difficult combat unless you're being chased by a pack of angry wolves or ghouls or other (very few) enemies with fast movement speed.

Let's just say that I relied on pots to power through the bandit camp arena and any early multi-enemy fights during those fights in the beginning and middle of the game.

 

[vonAchdorf]

From a German only interview:
Audiologs confirmed.
One guy likes the combat system - he didn't like Risen 3's but thinks this is more tactical again.
Other guy says that lots of little Gothic inspired details are in the game again (drinking duration of a healing potion, NPC chatter).
Music adapts to environment and some enemy types.
Game is open ended. No "final island", "really final island" problem.

 

[Alienman]

So only one island?

 

[vonAchdorf]

One continent probably - they said since you theoretically can reach every place in the beginning it's different.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

those animations its like we are back in 2002. production values look worse than fucking technomancer or some ruskies vaporware arpg. i think i will keep pretending that last PB game was Night of Raven and the rest does not even exist

 

[Tito Anic]

From a German only interview:
Audiologs confirmed. +
One guy likes the combat system - he didn't like Risen 3's but thinks this is more tactical again. meh
Other guy says that lots of little Gothic inspired details are in the game again (drinking duration of a healing potion, NPC chatter). meh
Music adapts to environment and some enemy types. +
Game is open ended. No "final island", "really final island" problem +.

Any news about system requirements?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Any news about system requirements?

Not in this interview.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Different (German only interview) with a little bit of footage starting before the 9min video above just differently cut footage with maybe new scenes and less fighting:

 

[vonAchdorf]

1.5 times the size of G3
looks like there are teleporter relics for fast travel which can be "activated"
No level scaling ("too generic and not rewarding") but very extensive possibilities to tweak the combat (time for combos) and the difficulty level (presets for different player styles).
Chapters confirmed, player decides how the world will change.
No official modding tools because of time constraints.
Skills pickpocketing, pick locks, hacking, alchemy, crafting (faction dependent - only outlaws can craft ammo)
300,000 words
No DLC planned.

 

[Tito Anic]

1.5 times the size of G3

Impressive if true.

 

[Kem0sabe]

How can you guys be excited about this after that video?

Also expecting it to suddenly improve by orders of magnitude up to release, especially after their last 2 games.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Feels like Risen 3 in a different setting. I'm fine with that. As long as they don't make it as retarded as Risen 2...

Wtf is "open ended" supposed to mean? Like, there won't be no proper ending or what?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Wtf is "open ended" supposed to mean? Like, there won't be no proper ending or what?

Bethesda style "you can keep playing and finish your quest log after the credits". They promise a proper ending (We think you'll like it) to the main quest, but you can keep playing after that.
---

Also German fan favorite Bodo Henkel (Xardas) is back for ELEX.

 

[sullynathan]

gothic 3 already had that

 

[United Nations]

i was so ready for him to ragdoll into space

disappointed

2:28 'Sup Bethesda

Also: looks like ass.

Turok, Gothic, and... I'm not sure.

What is this shit???

 

[Excidium II]

It's Ecletic.
It's Lavish.
It's Exhilerating.
It's Xenial.

 

[throwaway]

It's a bit sad when the rest of the industry has finally caught up to PB's offering and they, in turn, have to follow now tired and overdone formulas (audiologs, continued play after main campaign etc). Can't wait till the open-world sandbox style stops being the video game default so that they have more space to breathe in their niche.

Also, such a disparate mishmash of styles does them no favours when IMHO one of the main things that set the Gothics apart was the charm of their setting.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Lolwut. You have nostalgiad yourself retarded, bro. I love the Gothic series but the combat in it was a frustrating mess that can barely be described as ”functional after you learn to abuse it”. I would rather use the world elegant to describe a juggalo convention than I would about the Gothic combat.

Clearly you are one of those people who never "got" Gothic combat. Games back then didn't have introductory tutorials, and I don't think Gothic manual had much to say about combat details (at least I don't recall anything), so people just jumped in and tried it. When I first started playing Gothic, I would just use left and right slashes over and over, and then tried combos, but they would always get interrupted by humanoids, and so on, which is probably the common experience. But if you play it for a while, you realize that the way it's meant to be played is to actually use the parry with good timing against humanoids. So whenever the humanoid would attack you, you have to parry within fractions of a second, and then can safely counterattack right after. So the combat turns into an elegant flow of parries and counterattacks reminiscent of swordfighting movie scenes and is to this day one of the best ever done in an RPG.

It's a bit sad when the rest of the industry has finally caught up to PB's offering and they, in turn, have to follow now tired and overdone formulas (audiologs, continued play after main campaign etc). Can't wait till the open-world sandbox style stops being the video game default so that they have more space to breathe in their niche.

How has the rest of the industry caught up to PB? It's more a case of PB sinking down to the rest of the industry with their more recent shit. The industry is still largely oblivious to what makes a great sandbox RPG in the vein of Gothic 1/2. The relative recent successes in the subgenre (New Vegas or Witcher 3) have more to do with writing quality than actual gameplay, with the latter still being far inferior to those older classics.

 

[Metro]

How far have we come from the elegant timing based combat of G1/G2 to this rocket powered popamole. .

Lolwut. You have nostalgiad yourself retarded, bro. I love the Gothic series but the combat in it was a frustrating mess that can barely be described as ”functional after you learn to abuse it”. I would rather use the world elegant to describe a juggalo convention than I would about the Gothic combat.

You're as dumb as you are poor, my friend.

 

[Metro]

1.5 times the size of G3
looks like there are teleporter relics for fast travel which can be "activated"
No level scaling ("too generic and not rewarding") but very extensive possibilities to tweak the combat (time for combos) and the difficulty level (presets for different player styles).
Chapters confirmed, player decides how the world will change.
No official modding tools because of time constraints.
Skills pickpocketing, pick locks, hacking, alchemy, crafting (faction dependent - only outlaws can craft ammo)
300,000 words
No DLC planned.

Risen 3 didn't have scale but the game got trivially easy half-way through. I don't have much hope for this as it looks like Risen 3 with guns. I really wish they would go back to something simpler, smaller, and fleshed out. I get the feeling this is going to be a lot of empty space/tedious radiant like quests, and half-assed exploration.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Audiologs confirmed.

Also German fan favorite Bodo Henkel (Xardas) is back for ELEX.

dat's p cool tho

 

[Konjad]

Impressive if true.

I hate huge open worlds because it means they are 90% empty generated turds.

Gothic 1/2 had the best open world, small but every part of it was unique.

 

[throwaway]

How has the rest of the industry caught up to PB? It's more a case of PB sinking down to the rest of the industry with their more recent shit. The industry is still largely oblivious to what makes a great sandbox RPG in the vein of Gothic 1/2. The relative recent successes in the subgenre (New Vegas or Witcher 3) have more to do with writing quality than actual gameplay, with the latter still being far inferior to those older classics.

I'm largely referring to the fact that after the successes of Skyrim and the AC series for every licenced or AAA game, the "default game-type" seems to feature a number of elements that really made the Gothics stand out. You know the type, open world with a day-night circle and NPC schedules day, a light RPG layer with different build options numerous sidequests and a main driving plot, a bunch of systems like sneaking, crafting etc. Even the IMHO stand-out features ended up being done and eventually surpassed. Combat? Souls series. Khorinis? Novigrad. Slow and progression through a dangerous "gritty" world? All those post-apoc survival games. (etc.) Of course you could argue that the Gothics were greater than a sum of their constituent parts or that I'm missing some particular element (factions) that really made them stand out but I think it's evident that they stand out less if compared to the average than they did a decade ago.

 

[Jimmious]

I see people disagreed with my comment before and maybe I should make a clearer point.
I found the video very underwhelming. When someone presents a sci-fi open world game and what we see is just the main character sword-fighting with two mobs...well I just hope that that's not indicative of the final game.
I was expecting to see

Spoiler

and stuff

 

[vonAchdorf]

Risen 3 didn't have scale but the game got trivially easy half-way through. I don't have much hope for this as it looks like Risen 3 with guns. I really wish they would go back to something simpler, smaller, and fleshed out. I get the feeling this is going to be a lot of empty space/tedious radiant like quests, and half-assed exploration.

The Rocketbeans interviewer addressed this in the interview, after they told him that it was 1.5 times the size of Gothic. He asked them how they accomplished it after overreaching in G3. Their answer was a bit vague "we have a great team and the lead pushed it to the limit."