Editorial RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2015 - Project Daedalus, Hard West, XCOM 2, The Mandate and Fallout 4

[Night Goat]

Planet Poland?

 

[Fenix]

My hatred for Craphesda just rose to another level. Why, whyyyy do legions of retards like their turds so much...

Because they were grown on that shit. Who educate taste - sets the demand.
They educate taste - they got audience.

 

[Grotesque]

"and to steal a Fallout 4 branded cup"

so, does it fit when inserted?

 

[Bubbles]

The Mandate has had another Kickstarter update:

As you probably saw from our Gamescom developer video we have done some changes to crew management. Initially we were going with a hands-on approach where you would manage individual crew members and give orders to individual marines in boarding combat. However, while this approach works with a frigate with a low crew count later ships will have a much higher crew count. So over time (read: mid and late game stages) this hands-on approach starts to become impractical as you would spend more time proportionally to micro-manage your crew as the ship gets bigger.

With The Mandate we want to generate this command experience where you feel like Captain Picard or Admiral Adama. Neither of these two knew the first name of everybody serving under their command nor did they micro manage the daily routine of each member of their crew. But they were close to their command staff and other select officers so we decided to go back and take another look at how the crew is organized and try to find a solution that would scale better as the crew got larger. Our solution involves organizing the crew into squads and officers. While your crew is on duty they are organized into squads. [...] As captain you can interact with your officers and they in turn interact with your squads (crew). This emulates the military chain of command and is in line with the command experience we pitched on Kickstarter and are still very much committed to make a reality.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1964463742/the-mandate/posts/1363571

I already mentioned the "only interact with your officiers" mechanic in the report, but I hadn't realized that they'd initially promised full crew management in their pitch. That's quite a cutback.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah, that is a significant change ... but overall I think it's fine. Originally I believe it was going to scale, so you could command every guy if you wanted to, which would make sense for small engagements, but would also have robust chain-of-command type orders to just tell your officers to get it done and let the AI worry about exactly how. Skipping ahead to just have you issuing general orders is completely okay in my opinion ... no real reason to try to make it a fine control squad-based RPG when mid game that micromanagement is all going to go out the window anyway.

 

[Kjell E]

Well, regarding The Mandate, I'm a backer, and there seems to be a few misunderstandings regarding crew interaction. If you read the latest kickstarter update on https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1964463742/the-mandate/posts/1363571 the devs clearly state:

When your crew is off duty, however, individual squad members and officers will socialize and relax, and you may interact with them one at a time, hear their concerns and help them with problems.

This rather relevant detail is omitted in Bubbles' paraphrasing from the kickstarter update.

However, it is true that the reporter from Eurogamer seems sceptical in his report. Still he finds the concept interesting and would like the project to succeed: http://www.eurogamer.de/articles/2015-08-10-gamescom-angeschaut-the-mandate

I guess we'll see when the game arrives if my pledge was wasted money or not! And even if the game is a flop, the sound track is still easily worth 20 USD imho

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

Except I am more in the mood for X-Com than all the rest of this crap piled together.

Esp. Fallout 4: the Sims.

 

[Bubbles]

Except I am more in the mood for X-Com than all the rest of this crap piled together.

So am I. Sadly, there hasn't been a new X-Com game in almost 20 years.

 

[Xzylvador]

So am I. Sadly, there hasn't been a new X-Com game in almost 20 years.

What's wrong with Xenonauts?

(No really, I'm asking. Last time I tried it, it was so riddles with bugs and felt so lifeless that I kinda gave up on it. But that was like, a year or so before release. From what I read it's cleaned up pretty well since then.)

 

[Kem0sabe]

What's wrong with Xenonauts?

(No really, I'm asking. Last time I tried it, it was so riddles with bugs and felt so lifeless that I kinda gave up on it. But that was like, a year or so before release. From what I read it's cleaned up pretty well since then.)

There's nothing wrong with xenonauts, they patched it well, the community has a pretty awesome mod pack available, the experience is quite nice.

 

[Night Goat]

Hard West or The Mandate: which is a gayer name?

 

[Jaesun]

Man Date obviously....

 

[butchy]

Nice write up, I enjoyed perusing it. I would like more pictures of rpgcodex staff please.

 

[Bubbles]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/codex-member-pictures-gallery-on-page-1.32721/

 

[Fairfax]

Nice read again. I'd say this has to be in the Codex review:

"This game was a commercial success from the moment it was announced; the question of quality never even figured into it."

 

[Xzylvador]

"This game was a commercial success from the moment it was announced; the question of quality never even figured into it."

What, we're waiting for yet another PoE review?

 

[rohand]

If the Fallout 4 "cinema" presentation was nothing but a video of Todd Howard dancing on his underwear there'd still be a standing ovation and even more excited interjections.