Stormgate - sci-fi/fantasy RTS from ex-Blizzard devs

[Johannes]

You don't need pro scene or any of that for a game to be good for multiplayer. It just needs to be fun to play for that, and a pro scene (of whatever size) may follow from that.

Even if Stormgate does have a specific goal of attracting pro players and hosting tournaments, that is good publicity for the multiplayer but not mandatory.

 

[duke nukem]

She is so hot! And talented as i think Celestial has the best soundtrack in the game.

Its so memorable and has good flow and structure.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Music sounds mid as shit. Everything about this game is mid. Modern vydia is a lost cause. It's either soy faggy shit or 'Murrican neckbeard Marvel slop.

 

[Multidirectional]

Indeed sounds generic. Good thing I never listen to in game music when playing multiplayer games, it's always with my own playlist.

 

[Johannes]

How is she hot, just a generic azn

 

[Lyric Suite]

Indeed sounds generic. Good thing I never listen to in game music when playing multiplayer games, it's always with my own playlist.

Starcraft's soundtrack was great and was also perfect for multiplayer. WC3 was also very good.

Never felt the need to play anything in the background. It was just perfect the way it was.

Diablo 2 also was just perfect. Even after a million Bhaal runs i would still often just stand in town to listen to this:



At this point i'm starting to feel like 90s gaming was the classical music of this particular entertainment form.

 

[Multidirectional]

Indeed sounds generic. Good thing I never listen to in game music when playing multiplayer games, it's always with my own playlist.

Starcraft's soundtrack was great and was also perfect for multiplayer. WC3 was also very good.

Even if the soundtrack is good there's only so many times I can listen to same set of tracks over and over. I will need a break from it eventually. First time I did this was for Diablo II back in the day. I have nothing against soundtrack of that game but after enough hours I needed something different. And that point game became just about sperging and not atmosphere anymore anyway. In games I end up playing for ridiculous amount of time, and that's multiplayer games and some diablo-likes, I will inevitably switch to my favorite music instead. Also for racing games, but I rarely play those. I'm also close to doing that for Nioh 2. 500 hours might be enough.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Blizzard games had high production values, sure. But Blizzard also popularized insanely stupid shit like making a psychotic succubus the face of their tyranid clone.

I just got rec’d a video about how the zerg would defeat the star wars empire or whatever. It had Kerry’s face on it, as usual. She was literally invented by sex offenders as fap material based on the writer’s junkie ex, but is still brought up to this day.

I hate that bug waifu is a thing and is gonna stay a thing until starcraft fades in relevance and something else eclipses it in whatever consciousness it persists. Which probably won’t happen while I’m alive, unfortunately.

 

[Lyric Suite]

sex offenders

No such thing actually happened.

 

[AgentFransis]

Indeed sounds generic. Good thing I never listen to in game music when playing multiplayer games, it's always with my own playlist.

Starcraft's soundtrack was great and was also perfect for multiplayer. WC3 was also very good.

Never felt the need to play anything in the background. It was just perfect the way it was.

Diablo 2 also was just perfect. Even after a million Bhaal runs i would still often just stand in town to listen to this:



At this point i'm starting to feel like 90s gaming was the classical music of this particular entertainment form.

Funny anecdote about how Matt Uelmen ended up as the composer:



Excellence begets excellence and the virtue of persistence. The whole talk is quite interesting by the way.

The guy truly is a genius. I never played SC seriously, though I do enjoy watching some Starleague occasionally, but to this day I sometimes just listen to the SC OST.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

sex offenders

No such thing actually happened.

Did you not hear about the scandals?

 

[Lyric Suite]

sex offenders

No such thing actually happened.

Did you not hear about the scandals?

There was nothing to see in any of those scandals. The only bit of evidence that even remotely seemed veriafiable was that 4chan post about the guy stealing breast milk from the fridge but all that proves is that one of the nerds working in their office was an incel. No other evidence that i can see was actually shown, but then we live in the age where an accusation is the only evidence anybody needs.

Oh, you also have to be downright retarded to actually believe that Cosby room shit. As far as i'm concerned, accusations of harassement are just a tool for some kind of corporate shakedown. Whatever at Blizzard still had ties to the old company was obliterated so the whole thing could become a soulless corporate entity to be used specifically to push the most extreme scummy practices and the most virtulent DEI shit possible. I don't believe in the slighest the whole place was filled with rapists from top to bottom and if you actually accepted that notion you are a fucking retard.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Indeed sounds generic. Good thing I never listen to in game music when playing multiplayer games, it's always with my own playlist.

Starcraft's soundtrack was great and was also perfect for multiplayer. WC3 was also very good.

Never felt the need to play anything in the background. It was just perfect the way it was.

Diablo 2 also was just perfect. Even after a million Bhaal runs i would still often just stand in town to listen to this:



At this point i'm starting to feel like 90s gaming was the classical music of this particular entertainment form.

Funny anecdote about how Matt Uelmen ended up as the composer:



Excellence begets excellence and the virtue of persistence. The whole talk is quite interesting by the way.

The guy truly is a genius. I never played SC seriously, though I do enjoy watching some Starleague occasionally, but to this day I sometimes just listen to the SC OST.

The great thing about Starcraft is that the Protoss and Zerg tracks were just as good as the Terran one.

That required a fair deal of creativity because it's harder to come up with something that's supposed to be alien and unfamiliar and yet make it sound good at the same time.

In SC2 only the Terran soundtrack was decent because that was the easiest one to do.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

There was nothing to see in any of those scandals.

Okay.

They still suck at writing and their shit writing poisoned pop culture for decades to come.

Just look at the shitty humanoid characters populating the demon and angel rosters in stormgate. They’re not even trying to worldbuild interesting aliens anymore.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Except Protoss were actually interesting and aesthetically had one of the best alien designs i can think of in all pop culture.

Stormgate is shit those are the SC2 devs most likely.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Except Protoss were actually interesting and aesthetically had one of the best alien designs i can think of in all pop culture.

They’re a ripoff of the eldar and their mouthless human head design is lazy and silly. (Compare the R’ha short film for a superior skull design.)

But otherwise… the older pitches and drafts for starcraft lore predating the actual game script actually do sound interesting. Disparate terran colonies jockeying for power, zerg seeking perfection by consuming all life, protoss playing space police while dealing with questions of the morality of power… in the hands of a decent writer who actually cared about them, these could have become interesting stories.

Instead we got soap operatic capeshit.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Seems like quite a cynical product. Rehash ideas instead of creating anything risky with the direct goal of monetising/stealing the market of the whales from SC2. They'll get their payers and noone else will realise it exists. Could make a killing.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It doesn't matter what they "ripped" off. They are still super cool.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

It doesn't matter what they "ripped" off. They are still super cool.

Not when they’re generic wimpy dying space elves trying desperately to stay relevant by chasing phantoms and prophecies and shit.

I vastly prefer the huge galactic empire and space police angle from the manual draft lore.

 

[Lyric Suite]

We were talking about their aesthetic design i barely even remember the "lore" (except that i actually liked most of the characters).

 

[Tyranicon]

They’re a ripoff of the eldar and their mouthless human head design is lazy and silly. (Compare the R’ha short film for a superior skull design.)

But otherwise… the older pitches and drafts for starcraft lore predating the actual game script actually do sound interesting. Disparate terran colonies jockeying for power, zerg seeking perfection by consuming all life, protoss playing space police while dealing with questions of the morality of power… in the hands of a decent writer who actually cared about them, these could have become interesting stories.

Instead we got soap operatic capeshit.

I have a very strong suspicion that more complex and nuanced writing are detrimental to sales, especially in video games. And more so in the RTS genre.

My evidence: look at writing in most/all video games.

I can't even imagine something like Foundation or even A Song of Ice and Fire existing in a RTS. If someone actually manages to make something like that, it'll be a superhuman feat. Those closest we got were the Dune games, and they had the benefit of piggybacking off the books.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

We were talking about their aesthetic design i barely even remember the "lore" (except that i actually liked most of the characters).

I guess? It’s a pretty generic crystal spires and togas aesthetic. It fits, at least.

The protoss characters were probably the best written. That’s not saying much since the writing was horrible, but even the protoss “villains” like Aldaris and Alarak felt more alive that shallow morons like Mengsk or Duran. The scripts treat Aldaris like a dumb bigot and he gets shanked in a nonsensical subplot, but he’s not actually a bad person. The writer just made him a caricature despite his completely reasonable views. The dark templar nearly destroyed their home planet that one time. He has no reason to trust them.

Those closest we got were the Dune games, and they had the benefit of piggybacking off the books.

I liked the story in C&C and Dawn of War.

I admit RTS writing is generally mediocre. The best I can hope for is that the writer respects the factions. Blizz treated the factions as accessory superpowers to their badly written characters. Blizz stories are probably the worst in the genre. They’re the worst kind of capeshit.

 

[Johannes]

There's a lot of silly twists in the plot, but then it is an excuse to get you fight against the different races in different combinations, and sometimes to use multiple races yourself.

The details of the plot may be nonsensical but it has a good atmosphere mostly. The cutscenes of SCBW still hold up, they're just fun.

 

[Lyric Suite]

We were talking about their aesthetic design i barely even remember the "lore" (except that i actually liked most of the characters).

I guess? It’s a pretty generic crystal spires and togas aesthetic. It fits, at least.

Everything is "generic" if you decide to ignore the design and stick to the concept only.

"Alien? Meh, just a generic creature why is it so popular?"

Some of us happen to think the new units in SC2 suck. Nothing changed in terms of the concept, it's just their design that is deficient, which shows there's "generic crystal spires", and then there's generic crystal spires. It's not the same just because the idea is the same.

The concept itself is not the point anyway. Protoss were intentionally designed to be "generic" because they thought players would have responded better to something that was familiar to them (they are basically just glorified greys). The artistry then went into the design of the individual units and the race itself in the game.

Starcraft 1 for me remains one of the few near 10/10 games in terms of design, similarly to Doom (even the damn cursor is one of the best i've ever seen in a game lmao). The asymetrical races, the fact each of them was perfectly designed down to the last unit, the sounds being all distinct and instantly recognizable, and then the music that actually tells the story in itself. The Zerg soundtrack for instance fits perfectly the concept of a new race who is exploring its new existence. The music isn't just ominious and generically evil. It's vibrant and full of expectancy.

Sure, there were a few drawbacks. Their writers weren't exactly the best, though i think up to SC1 they weren't that bad either. Certainly there's nothing in that game that is even remotely as cringy as the shit we have seen in SC2. Also, story telling has never been that high in the RTS genre to begin with, for whatever that's worth.

If Stormgate looks generic and dumb it's not because it was influenced by Starcraft, it's because the devs are shit. Just like the SC2 devs were shit and couldn't hold a candle to the original team.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, speaking of the soundtrack again, i'm getting the sense some people here doesn't actually understand just how good it is. Might not be obvious unless you play it outside the game, since the gameplay is busy enough to distract you from it:



While i was making this post i listened to Protoss 1 again and the construction of that song is as amazing as i remembered it. It's like a minature techno-synth symphony, triumphant and alien at the same time, with some knock out harmonic progressions.