Information Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny Remake Available for Preorder on Steam

[AbounI]

The first design version of the box cover was better IMHO.

I think so too.Why did they change it?

 

[Elim]

Half-naked woman.

 

[villain of the story]

Yeah. If only they dressed her properly or all three figures were as cornily dressed. Unless you are going for that 80s sandal and sword look, you are supposed to grow out of half-naked warrior women trope after adolescence. If you just want to see half (or fully) naked women, put them in the correct context or dress everybody else down as well.

 

[Jack Dandy]

The video looks terribad.

 

[mondblut]

Nooo that's not true.

it is. no additional content or tweaking changes the fact that the original trilogy is how the game was meant to be played or that it costs less in its entirety than the hd remake.

or that supporting game remakes means supporting the cancer that destroys creativity in the entire entertainment business.

I've played through the original trilogy 3 times, the last time just a few weeks ago, now I wouldn't mind a nice reskin of it at all, preferably with some retarded issues of the originals being finally fixed.

Fuck your "creativity". We're getting ass effects and oblivions thanks to your "creativity". Give me uncreative, fixed and modern-looking remakes of every decent RPG from 1985 to 1995 over your shit creativity any day!

 

[mondblut]

Yeah. If only they dressed her properly or all three figures were as cornily dressed. Unless you are going for that 80s sandal and sword look, you are supposed to grow out of half-naked warrior women trope after adolescence. If you just want to see half (or fully) naked women, put them in the correct context or dress everybody else down as well.

Women must be hot and near-undressed, or they shouldn't be at all. Fuck your "adolescence" along with his ^ "creativity".

 

[HiddenX]

Shadows over Riva

Star Trail

Blade of Destiny

Scantily clad vixens have a tradition on Arkania covers - nothing wrong with that...

Are some militant femmes here?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The first design version of the box cover was better IMHO.

I think so too.Why did they change it?

The bottom is a borderline unreadable letter soup. I like the old artwork better, though. The new one is the generic "team shot", looks exactly like Drakensang's to boot.

 

[Mortmal]

That box cover is bland and boring, they really did the minimal efforts possible, if the women armor was the problem they could still have done a good artwork with realistic armors. Not too surprising as its just a budget graphic overhaul of an old title, a true sequel requires too much work i suppose. I am not interested into it as i already played the first games and i can still stomach 2D graphics . It wont bring a new generation of players into the genre either , while its looking better theres nothing astonishing at all on the screenshots.

 

[villain of the story]

Blades of Destiny vs initial remake art:

The original is more classy. The remake looks like and amateur copy and for whatever reason, the artist saw it fit to make the guy on the left wear pants (while the remake has better proportions) while leaving the woman pretty much the same.

That doesn't fly with me. I'd be okay with the original. It's 80s fantasy art sensibility. The remake is lacking that.

 

[SuicideBunny]

So.... if someone were to remake Baldur's Gate with proper turn-based combat, supporting it would somehow be bad?

Because, according to you the awful RTwP combat is how the game was supposed to be played.

the people who made the original had a mostly coherent vision. they might have fucked something up, like rtwp in infinity engine games, but it is still a coherent whole, which is especially true for old titles of roa quality that do not suffer from biowarian schizophrenic writers mismatching tones and styles all over the place or daemonsgate's frankenstein's monster-like design mismatches. no matter how good a remake will be, whenever some third person not involved in the original adds content to it, said content will be made based upon that person's personal interpretation of said game which means it's very likely it will not match what i or you perceive as the game's creative vision, mood, tone, whatever, because our subjective interpretations will be different. in this case, their initial design of the overworld map is proof enough that it won't be any different here.

Fuck your "creativity". We're getting ass effects and oblivions thanks to your "creativity".

no, we aren't. there is nothing creative about bioware remaking the same game in a slightly different setting yet again.
if people are good enough to not totally fuck-up a remake, their time will always be better spent at trying to achieve something more original.

 

[Midair]

Even if RoA can be improved, does anyone honestly think the motivation here is a desire to improve the original, as opposed to a desire for a low cost way to make a game, i.e. the hd remake concept? It could still be worth playing, though.

 

[Excidium]

Even if RoA can be improved, does anyone honestly think the motivation here is a desire to improve the original, as opposed to a desire for a low cost way to make a game, i.e. the hd remake concept? It could still be worth playing, though.

Of course not. It's not like RoA is the game most desperately in need of a remake.

If they really cared to make a game they'd just make a DSA game in the spirit of those

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Does their motivation matter?

 

[Galdred]

Does their motivation matter?

It depends on whether you enjoy playing games that are purely cash grabs.

 

[Vulcris]

Does their motivation matter?

It depends on whether you enjoy playing games that are purely cash grabs.

How can a game with so little budget, wich aim a very little niche for 20 bucks can be a cash grab?

 

[Gord]

Because this is the codex and EDGY!

 

[Galdred]

How can a game with so little budget,

If it were not for the little budget, it could obviously not be considered a cash grab... :p

wich aim a very little niche for 20 bucks can be a cash grab?

That's why I said the motivations behind doing a remake mattered. Why spend 100% of the budget for content on 3D graphics anyway (as opposed to creating a new game inspired from RoA)?

 

[himmy]

Does their motivation matter?

It depends on whether you enjoy playing games that are purely cash grabs.

Exactly. Have you notices how Throvalla was such a highly anticipated game and a total success? Kickstarter has proven once again the power of a brand. Why do you think Brian Fargo tried so hard to get the Torment brand, instead of just calling the new game a "spiritual successor"?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Does their motivation matter?

It depends on whether you enjoy playing games that are purely cash grabs.

I enjoy playing good games.

 

[Galdred]

Exactly. Have you notices how Throvalla was such a highly anticipated game and a total success? Kickstarter has proven once again the power of a brand. Why do you think Brian Fargo tried so hard to get the Torment brand, instead of just calling the new game a "spiritual successor"?

You are right, but they still could have got the licence and tried to do another episode : Realm of arkania, return to Riva. I at least would definitely have been more interested in another game than a reskin of a game I already own.

 

[Gord]

Calling it a reskin is going a bit far, they ported it to a different engine, supposedly also ported some improvements from parts 2 and 3 (I guess esp. the better inventory)and generally modernized it while keeping the mechanics and story.
If you aren't interested in it, because you don't feel it offers you enough new stuff, don't buy it.
I'm not sure yet myself if I will. Not at this point at least, since my last playthrough of BoD isn't that far back. But the price they ask is very fair, imho.

In contrast getting the license and coming up with a completely new game, without that much experience in the field, that's a totally different beast.
If those ports turn out to be of good quality and they make enough money (and get the necessary experience) to do a new game in the setting, why not?
For now, however, I think it's cool that someone did pick up RoA again and seems willing to keep it old-school.

 

[Stabwound]

Who cares about this or that? The game itself looks solid, and let's face it, there hasn't been a game of this type (barring Skull of Smackdown) in a very long time. I'm not a fan of them keeping the janky-looking top-down TB combat mode with 1st person exploration, but other than that it looks pretty solid.

I've never played the original, but this looks pretty solid and I'm looking forward to it. I compare to to Ultima 5: Lazarus, which most here would agree was an amazing game in its own right, if not arguably better than the original for various reasons.

And let's face it: if it wasn't for the kickstarter craze of last year and the games coming out, this would be nothing but salivated over here. How can this possibly be a bad thing? In a genre of games where Dragon Age was willfully gobbled down like dogshit with sugar a few years ago because it was the closest thing we'd had to a traditional CRPG in forever, this game looks like a masterpiece.

Yeah, I get that people who played the original to death aren't that excited about it, and I don't blame you, but even besides that, this is a pretty cool development in the world of CRPGs.

 

[Gicusan]

Who cares about this or that? The game itself looks solid, and let's face it, there hasn't been a game of this type in a very long time.

Yeah, I get that people who played the original to death aren't that excited about it, and I don't blame you, but even besides that, this is a pretty cool development in the world of CRPGs.

 

[AbounI]

german RoA fanbase who works as beta tester seems to be confident and proud of what they have see so far, even about the "ruleset" changes

Our revisions to the rules where really very careful ones, and only those that were easily integrated AND enhanced the gameplay were used. An example: In the old ruleset, there was a "bad dieroll" when you rolled a 20 to a check, say, an attack check with a sword. You then had negative consequences. Now, the 4.1 Rules made a change in order to "confirm" this bad dieroll, requiring you to roll a second time, and only having the effects of the bad dieroll if you failed to meet your minimum attack value.

The desired effect here is that beginner Swordfighters are more likely to have really bad things happen (like "attack, ups, lost my weapon") than seasoned swordfighters with years of training and experience. In the original ruleset, this was exactly as likely for Level 1 as for Level 7 Characters.

Another, not direct but indirect change to the rules is with traveling by ship (of course only applicable to Blade of Destiny): In the original, you had to wait for the flood on the next day if you booked a ship passage (going out at about 9 in the morning), or you could have no ships in the harbor for days at a time, which was specifically bad in Kord, where you could only leave by harbor AND which was badly frequented with ships. This is superrealistic, but was in our eyes also superboring and could even give players a "stuck" feeling. So now you can leave by ship any time, day and night, and only the *type* of passage and its cost is different.

This is just two examples for the adaptions we made, we stumbled over many problems and outright bugs in the original ruleset, but tried to be as true to the original or at least its intentions, but also tried to let "reasonable comfort and gamedesign" of the last 20 years flow into this recreation of the original. We worked closely with one of the biggest german RoA communities (http://www.crystals-dsa-foren.de) from Day 1 of our development (and even before) to ensure this "truth to the original", and our betatesters consisted almost exclusively of people that played the original, and in parts for years.

And nobody so far complained that we were "too casual" or "raping the original", on the contrary. So, long story short, and to quote a nobel-price-winner-gone-biggest-eavesdropper-ever: "Yes, you can".