Game News Fallen Gods Update #1: Introducing Fallen Gods

[Haba]

As I posted on the ITS board, the Hávamál teaches:

Praise day at even, a wife when dead,
a weapon when tried, a maid when married,
ice when 'tis crossed, and ale when 'tis drunk.

I think "an RPG when 'tis played" could reasonably be added to the list.

"when bought from Steam at -70% discount"

 

[Volken]

While Norse mythology is an overkill nowadays the art on those screenshots is both gorgeous and eerie with a morbid twist. Liek it!

 

[MRY]

As long as the game doesn't have strong menz with manbuns and warpaint, elves and shit, I'm in....

I initially had another glib response, but I guess what I'd rather say is that I'm not in the business of tailoring my content to peanut gallery preferences one way or the other. In fact, part of my hesitation in announcing the game was a desire to avoid such preferences being expressed to me. Over the updates, the game's content will speak for itself, and then you can reasonably decide to take it or leave it. No sense in deciding in advance.

Looks interesting, simply because it reminds me of Darklands (visually). Although the viking-but-pls-don't-call-it-viking setting looks disturbingly stale, as others have stated.

Darklands is an inspiration, though Arnold Hendrick's Barbarian Prince is a stronger influence. As long as development takes another 5 years, maybe people will have moved on from Vikings, and the latter problem will resolve itself. But what I would say is that Viking Age Scandinavia is a bundle of lots of different things, and I've taken some things from the bundle but not others. For me, major appealing aspects are the wry fatalism, the lawspeaker/ting culture, the picaresque mentality of many saga heroes, and the alliterative rhythm and Anglo-Saxon/Norse language of the sagas themselves. For others, it might be shield maidens, burning monasteries, the Norse pantheon and cosmology, the far-faring ships (Byzantium and Granada and Canada and Paris, oh my!), the violence, etc. Even visually there are different aspects you can draw on -- sometimes you have horned helmets, bulging muscles, dragon-headed ships as a focus, other times it's the bleak northern environment, the dark halls with glinting gold, ravens plucking corpses, etc.

At some point I got exhausted/depressed by the number of Norse-ish games coming out, so I can't tell whether everything we have to say and show has already been said and shown, but I'd be a little surprised if that were the case.

What's going on in that second picture tho

Stronk noble dragon meets vikingoid.

Haba Sucker. Wait for 75%.

Volken Thanks!

 

[Vault Dweller]

As long as the game doesn't have strong menz with manbuns and warpaint, elves and shit, I'm in....

I initially had another glib response, but I guess what I'd rather say is that I'm not in the business of tailoring my content to peanut gallery preferences one way or the other. In fact, part of my hesitation in announcing the game was a desire to avoid such preferences being expressed to me. Over the updates, the game's content will speak for itself, and then you can reasonably decide to take it or leave it. No sense in deciding in advance.

 

[hivemind]

the pitch is kinda meh-ish tbh

I'll still try it out because of the dev posting on codex

the UI kinda reminds me of serpent in the staglands which was impossibly boring so my initial feeling is reduced by this association also

 

[hivemind]

by pitch I of course mean first two sentences and a glance at the screenshots

 

[MRY]

I realize "peanut-gallery preferences" sounds pejorative -- I didn't mean it that way, only that I'm making the game based on my own vision of what I want it to be, rather than to try to chase what others want,.

 

[Vault Dweller]

the pitch is kinda meh-ish tbh

I'll still try it out because of the dev posting on codex

the UI kinda reminds me of serpent in the staglands which was impossibly boring so my initial feeling is reduced by this association also

I read the first 5 updates and it is now my most anticipated RPG. Truly brilliant stuff.

 

[toro]

Looks good.

Please release it faster so I can add it to my list of "good games I don't have time to play"

 

[Country_Gravy]

What's going on in that second picture tho

Dragon rape confirmed!

 

[Darth Roxor]

What's going on in that second picture tho

obvious GROM inspirations

 

[MRY]

Vault Dweller Between you and Ziets, I'm actually slightly excited about my own game. For one glorious weekend, my self-loathing is on vacation.

toro "release it faster" If only.

Country_Gravy Nith is only the beginning.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

What's going on in that second picture tho

Dragon rape confirmed!

That look of utter satisfaction...

 

[MRY]

The wurm is basically modeled on the smiley

 

[baud]

Vault Dweller Between you and Ziets, I'm actually slightly excited about my own game. For one glorious weekend, my self-loathing is on vacation.

There's Fargo too:

 

[Blaine]

I initially had another glib response, but I guess what I'd rather say is that I'm not in the business of tailoring my content to peanut gallery preferences one way or the other.

This is the correct approach. Run the game's development like a warlord, heeding only trusted advisors and never hesitating to cull weakness; ignore the preferences and opinions not only of the hoi polloi, but also of the monocled few. Even the most monocled Codexers either don't know what they really want, or else they don't know how to express what they want in a way that's useful as unsolicited feedback. That said, you should of course gather solicited feedback from prospective players when it's truly needed.

This is only meant to be an affirmation. I know you have the chops, and you're spot-on: You must be protected from unsolicited gibberish at all costs. You'll hear none from me until the game is released.

I love the atmospheric artwork and UI design, the concept, and the setting. While Norse-inspired games may have come into vogue lately, possibly in the wake of Skyrim, none of them were particularly good.

You must create that greatness for us, and you must do it without us.

 

[MRY]

[inspirational speech]

What is this, Friday Night Lights?!

Anyway, the truth is that it's not really a matter of encouragement or affirmation. I really want people to like the game, but want them to like this game. It's something I've wanted to make for ages, and there's a fair chance it'll be the end of my game-making days given how busy life has gotten. "If I compromise a lot and people like it more, then I'll have more capital for when I make the game I really want" is a strategy that has gotten me this far, but I don't have the time to take it farther.

Also, I'm basically unable to give people want they want. I couldn't produce FG to spec any more than I could produce my TTON writing to spec. (There was an absolute prohibition on wordplay, for instance.) I was lucky there that my bosses and colleagues indulged my deviations. If I tried to make FG the game the Codex wanted or the game that Twitter wanted, it would end up a burlesque of other people's ideas, more offensive to them than my own ideas would be.

That said, FG's still pretty compromised because I can't run anything like a warlord; it's just not my disposition. I'd rather have artists believe in the work they're doing, which means giving them some creative freedom. Ultimately, they know how to ply their craft better than I do. And I don't pay enough, or have the force of personality of Vince, to issue diktats. And on top of that, I have a Polish factotum who is basically like that eye thing on Londo Mollari -- I may wear the ~Napoleon uniform, but he's really in charge.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Oh nice indeed. Good luck. Like toro, I'm looking forward to adding this to my pile of games to be played when I have the time.

 

[Blaine]

That said, FG's still pretty compromised because I can't run anything like a warlord; it's just not my disposition. I'd rather have artists believe in the work they're doing, which means giving them some creative freedom. Ultimately, they know how to ply their craft better than I do.

It's just an overly-dramatic turn of phrase. After you've hired artists whom you've verified are skilled, of course you should leave them to their own devices as much as you're able.

Every team has its own methodology. I don't really know what yours is, but you do, and it's worked very well in the past. Whatever you did before, just do that, and for God's sake don't take advice from any Codexers.

If I tried to make FG the game the Codex wanted or the game that Twitter wanted, it would end up a burlesque of other people's ideas, more offensive to them than my own ideas would be.

Isn't that what I just said? To make the game we want, you must not try to make the game we want. You should make the game YOU want. That's the great irony: It's much more likely it'll end up being a game that Codexers actually want that way.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[baud]

If you were to assign color palete areas as happy, neutral, sad then In shared screenshots there is no happy.

Isn't that how the original inspiration is written? From one of MRY's post: "the bleak northern environment, the dark halls with glinting gold, ravens plucking corpses, etc.".
The game is the aftermath of a revolution among the gods, which is having consequences on the world, from the other tread: ' catastrophe has befallen the world: political, ecological, and spiritual.'

In that case, I'd say the art is reinforcing the themes and the tones of the game.


Your troll-womyn is fun.

 

[MRY]

Blaine Yes, we come to the same place, you by ascribing to me heroic strength of will and powerful leadership abilities, me by acknowledging I'm too tone-deaf and incompetent to actually accede to others' wishes.

lukaszek "Is it final?" It is very unlikely that the sprites, paintings, or main UI features will change palettes. I suppose it's within the realm of possibility that things like how options are illuminated will. "As per pictures of events, will there be an option to switch between colored and mono?" No.

"you had me at troll-women" "I shall urge you to provide a sneak peek with homm1, not to set up wrong expectations"

In FG's setting (as in the sagas) "troll women" and "witches" are overlapping concepts. We don't have anything called "troll women" because our trolls are something specific (stone that was licked to life by Trund). Here is how troll-women are described in Illugi's Saga and The Saga of Grim Shaggy-Cheek:

Snot hung above her mouth, she had a beard and she was bald. Her hand was like an eagle's claw, and her sleeves both burned, and the cape that she wore went no further than her rump, and was scanty all over. Her eyes were green, her forehead straight, and her ears rose like a mast. You could not call her fair.

(That last line pretty much sums up why I love the sagas.)

But he'd not been lying there long, when he saw a woman coming--if you could call her a woman. She couldn't have been more than a seven-year-old girl, going by her height, but so fat, Grim doubted he could have got his arms around her. She was long-faced, hard-faced, hook-nosed, with hunched up shoulders, black-faced and wobbly-jowled, filthy-faced and bald at the front. Both hair and hide of her were black. She wore a shriveled leather smock. It barely reached down to her buttocks. Hardly kissable, he thought, as she had a big booger dangling down in front of her chops.

We haven't included all these features, but they were the basis of her design.

Here's what I said about our witches in the interview Vince and I did with Chris Picone:

Witches are probably my favourite “characters” in the game, as they have this wildness, wickedness, and hunger to them that I think brings them closer to the folkloric brand of witches than what we mostly see in modern stuff. If you think about the stuff that witches do as a matter of course in old stories (eating babies, causing family members to kill each other, impersonating wives to sleep with their husbands, interfering with good governance, curdling cows’ milk in the udders) it is utterly at odds with them as just, like, cackling old ladies on brooms. They attack the things that we hold most sacred precisely because we hold them most sacred. But by living outside social norms, they also play the role of the wise fool or iconoclast who’s off the grid, so there can be something appealing about them. Here’s an example of an encounter where a witch saves you from a wizard (disguised as a humble hermit) who has tricked you into spending the night:

An unholy howling rouses you from your rest, and in the dark you spot a loathsome bulk astride the balking hermit. Hag-ridden, he cries for help, a call only half-heard with all the caterwauling. Before your mind can make head or tail of this unseemly tupping, the witch leans down and seems to suck the very sound, and life, from his lips. She turns to you and spits, muttering that she’s sprung you from a wizard’s trap. Striking a light, you see scattered tools and runes that do indeed bespeak black spells. You leave the dead man and his hut without waiting for the dawn.

Incidentally, update #5 is about witches (and wights).

baud "I'd say the art is reinforcing the themes and the tones of the game." That's the idea, anyway. We want art that has a wide range of colors and tones, to be sure, but the world we're trying to depict is worn out and bleak.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Is there an option to pre-order?

 

[MRY]

Nope. If you feel a need to make an irrational friendly gesture, you could always give Primordia a spin, or spread the FG gospel on social media/boards. But we don't really need financial help, and I don't think people should buy games before they can meaningfully assess them.