Editorial RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2016 - Vampyr, ELEX, The Guild 3 and Battle Chasers

[Excidium II]

I guess if 5% of your total revenue is more than the hours spent working on your own solution.

Maybe PB just has some massive nerd doing all the engine programming so it's cheap.

 

[Fairfax]

I guess if 5% of your total revenue is more than the hours spent working on your own solution.

Right, it's why so many small or mid-sized devs are using UE4. However, if you're a big publisher, it's not worth it in the long run. Even if Epic negotiates a smaller percentage with them, 1% would still be a lot. Imagine if EA had to give Epic 1% of their gross revenue from every Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, Need for Speed, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. That's tens of millions they'd lose every year.

 

[vortex]

I'm still mad Pirahna didn't use Unreal or Cryengine for Elex.

Unreal is expensive. If you're a small developer, 5% of total revenue can make a huge difference in the end. CryEngine is also expensive (big upfront fee, or so I've heard), has little support and is not nearly as flexible as Unreal or even Unity. Star Citizen needed help from Crytek so often that they now have an in-house team of Crytek programmers tasked with developing the engine for them.
Epic has streams, videos and docs teaching devs what to do, and they offer direct assistance as well. Unity has a bunch of resources as well, plus the asset store.

Nowadays it's better to develop or improve your own engine if you have the money for it. Just look at Ubisoft, EA, Square-Enix, ZeniMax, and so on. The problem is that smaller studios don't, so they go with Unity or take the risk with UE4. Source 2 was going to be the saviour, but as usual, you can't count on Valve to do anything, so it's still stuck in Valve Time.

It's really honorable and creative to develop your own engine and I welcome Pirahna for this. It's just, it seems they always lack some threads to become something more and make bigger success. Whether that be system design, animations, graphics department, repetitous gameplay toward the endgame, performance...
So, I thought it would be valuable time spent learning implementing other engine's features what is yours lack the most. And that way, polish the technical side of your engine.
Maybe Nordic can help them out with that.

 

[ntonystinson]

Story oriented RPGS can't really have choice and consequence except a few binary options because the developers have already created a direction they want you to follow, so the dialogue wheels just serve aesthetic purposes. I was hoping Vampyr would be a more open Bloodlines. Seems its just another ARPG this time with a Vampire Theme

 

[Siveon]

I was hoping Vampyr would be a more open Bloodlines. Seems its just another ARPG this time with a Vampire Theme

Those are some high-ass hopes for this developer. I don't know why you expected otherwise.

 

[Bubbles]

I was hoping Vampyr would be a more open Bloodlines. Seems its just another ARPG this time with a Vampire Theme

Those are some high-ass hopes for this developer. I don't know why you expected otherwise.

 

[Siveon]

That's just a load of hot air. Plenty of crappy devs/games get awards.

 

[Bubbles]

RPG Codex have released a preview of Elex as well as an interview with Björn and Jenny from Piranha Bytes. RPG Codex had the opportunity to play the game and to talk with the developers at Gamescom in August. The two editors got different impressions of the game in the process. While the first one thinks the game is mediocre, the other one has a more positive mindset.

http://www.worldofelex.de/en/site/news-archive/11-news-en/245-preview-and-interview-by-rpg-codex

That's not quite how I'd phrase it, but it's nice to be quoted nonetheless.

And a German-language comment:

Oha, die Preview und das Interview sind echt empfehlenswert. Im Gegensatz zu dem weichgespülten und oberflächlichen Werbegesülze, das man bei unseren deutschen Magazinen zu lesen bekommt (Ich hoffe hier liest jemand von der PCGames oder GameStar mit. :winken: ), ist dies hier mal erfrischend anders. Solche direkte, ehrliche und unbequeme Fragen, völlig aus dem Bauch heraus, würde ich mir öfter wünschen. Besonders interessant wir das Interview gerade dadurch, dass einer der beiden Interviewer "Bubbles" dem ganzen Konzept des Spiels recht "skeptisch" gegenübersteht, während der andere "Jarl" nach eigener Aussage "vorsichtig optimistisch" ist, wodurch eine Art "Good Cop vs. Bad Cop" Situation entsteht. In dem Interview machen beide keinen Hehl daraus, dass sie Gothic 1-3, sowie Risen 1 toll fanden, von Risen 2 und 3 jedoch herb enttäuscht waren. Interessanterweise kündigt "Bubbles" das Interview und die Preview im Forum mit den Worten an "ELEX, das nächste Meisterwerk der Entwickler von Risen 2". Ein Schelm, wer Böses dabei denkt.

Interessant ist auch die zugehörige Diskussion in deren Forum. Z.B. wurde von jemandem kritisiert, dass die Antworten sehr viel "inhaltloses Geschwafel" enthielten, was "Bubbles bestätigte und das es ihn "zunehmendes gestört" hätte, sodass seine "Fragen zum Ende hin schärfer wurden". Das ist eine Sache, die auch mir immer wieder negativ aufstößt. Zu guter Letzt bestätigen Björn und Jenny erneut, dass sie sich einfach kein Gothic mehr zutrauen, da sie es den Fans nicht Rech machen könnten. Das kann ich sogar völlig nachvollziehen. Für mich ist vielmehr der Umkehrschluss total illusorisch. Das würde nämlich bedeuten, die Fans hätten an ein anderes Spiel, das nicht Gothic heißt, automatisch viel geringere Erwartungen, sodass dieses viel besser bei den Spielern ankäme und potentiell mehr Erfolg hätte. Naja, wir werden sehen.

 

[JarlFrank]

Now we can officially claim that the Codex is a better journalistic entity than GameStar and PCGames

(not that that's much of an achievement)

 

[veevoir]

Elex got me moderately excited after this preview.

 

[cpmartins]

The Codex Golden Standard should be to beat KOTAKU as the best videogaming news source of the internet.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Moar like best cocksucking entity.

 

[Ranarama]

How did they afford the Vampyr name from Brian Weston and Victor Shao? Looking forward to the sequel though. I don't remember any vampires in that game though. Weird.