See this? It’s reality.
From the interview it sounds like it will be an action-oriented game in a large, almost free roaming environment, and by the way they want you to know that they have PHYSICS that are JUST LIKE REAL LIFE. Polloni seriously harps on this point several times; the focus of the game, at least according to her, is to be as realistic as possible. That’s certainly a really hard thing to pull off, and precious few games (Half-Life 2 is the only one that comes to mind) have really made it work.
That said, I’m very interested in what they come up with; the move toward action-oriented game play certainly isn’t surprising (le sigh), but on the other hand this game could turn out to be the best Alone in the Dark since Alone in the Dark 2: One Eyed Jack’s Revenge.
This interview makes me very skeptical. I really wasn’t a big fan of resident evil’s transition to action (4 is probably my least favorite out of the series) and was really hoping that Alone In the Dark will be more adventure oriented. To me it just sounds like they are trying to be accepted by a wider audience.
What really has me intrigued is how nonlinear the game sounds. Have we ever really had a nonlinear horror game before?
Gregory Horror Show and Shadow of Memories spring to mind.
Well the story in Shadow of Memories was out-of-order, but the gameplay was completely linear. I think RD is talking about the wide-open, free roaming environment that they are hinting at.
That’s not been done yet to my knowledge in a horror game.
I can’t say I look forward to this one much at all. I loved the first AITD, the second was ok but was annoying with the emphasis on combat and subtraction from the more mystery adventure elements, AITD3 was pretty creepy and atmospheric but the story was somewhat in the second half of the game.
Then came AITD4 which basically threw up all over the previous entries which also wasn’t helped that they took early century Carnby who was just a normal guy and made him into some hot, buffed out paranormal investigator action hero in the millenium. Now AITD5 comes along and looks to follow in AITD4’s footsteps only with more action orientation. I can’t say I have very high hopes for it. The series should have just stayed in the early part of the 20th century and kept with the horror/mystery theme.
AITD3 was pretty creepy and atmospheric but the story was somewhat muddled in the second half of the game.^
Where is Lovecraft in these new installments? Why then keep naming it “Alone in the Dark”? Just to make profit of a long-term run series? The game could have just been named any other thing, there’s almost no relationship with Cthulhu myth and tales. How bad…
see, i think the whole physics thing is a bit retarded since you cannot feel the items you pick up, and are instead moving them with what is essentially a veyr short pole its like walking through chest high wtaer yknow?, sure you can move just like in normal conidtitions, but you have less feeling and control about how you do it.
http://kotaku.com/357366/alone-in-the-dark-5-tech-demo
Kotaku has a tech demo video of some of these features:
http://kotaku.com/357366/alone-in-the-dark-5-tech-demo
Very cool demo. Now as long as you are not forced to figure out one of 10,000 possibilities over and over, but are free to creatively solve a problem in multiple was, it may be a ton of fun.
Thanks for the video link: lots of cool possibilities there.
As an aside, I clicked on the main page of Kotaku after watching it and I saw that they had a 10-min documentary on a Biohazard 2 commercial that George Romero made. Interesting stuff.
http://www.gamesthatwontsuck.com
This “real physics” talk is a bunch of hoo-ha. I don’t know how advanced AitD5’s physics will be, but to claim that Half-Life 2 has “realistic physics” or even that it was the only game that employed them is silly. there are kazillions of 3D physics demos just as ‘advanced’ as Half-Life 2 – and they’re made by joe shmoes. rolling balls, bounciness, domino effects, buoyancy, mass, gravity, etc. It’s really not that complicated.
> Zeroth
If you read the post, you might notice that I singled out Half-Life 2 as a game that used physics for game play successfully. There are very few games like that. Psi Ops is another.
Also, if you think that physics is “not really that complicated,” I think you need to try writing some physics code. Just getting your ball to come to rest on a flat surface is fairly tricky, never mind gravity guns and tractor beams.
http://www.GamesThatWontSuck.com/
> Chris
getting a ball to stop is as simple as a good judgement of how much velocity things lose at what speed by what level of friction it is compared to the level of friction of the surface it is on.
tractor beams and gravity guns are as simple as grabbing an entity and contsantly changing it’s origin to somewhere infront of the player.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but I do have some experience.
> Zeroth
I write game code for a living. I’ve written many physics systems (though none near the complexity of the ones being demo’d here in ALOD5). They are not simple to write, they are not simple to debug, and the absolute hardest part is making the math actually behave in the way that you expect (coming to rest, etc). The reason that the Havok middleware package sells so well is that it solves many of these problems for game developers.
Physics is not simple. Physics-based game play is REALLY hard to get right.