Eye spotted these two screenshots from ELEX, which have been made available via their Twitter account.
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- Joined
- Aug 30, 2006
- Messages
- 11,232
To be honest i kinda lost my faith in PB. Every time i played a new game from them the gameplay just seemed pretty much identical with the previous game. Their combat animations especially were not great. No elaborate defense system (dodging, rolling, parrying etc), slow response times to key/mouse clicks, in general pretty cumbersome and slow combat systems.
I thought Pluto13 is above plaguespreading vanity among developers who sold their soul to social networks.
I'm not quite yet fully sold on the slight hodge-podge combination of settings, but I have high hopes for PB as a fan to restore their status and mantle somewhat as a top notch RPG developer. Looking forward to hearing more, naturally.
Unlike you, I adore the engine and mock_angry_joe with combat only he can't understand, but it's their storytelling that IMO didn't get improved enough within Risen trilogy.
If they really wanted to do that, I think all they would have to do is make Gothic 5. But seems that will never happen.
Do you really believe that a Gothic 5 would be any different than the path they started to follow with Risen? I personally doubt it.
On the other hand, PB for me is a little bit like an anachronism. They develop games that are in the veins of AAA titles, but technically they aren't up to that standards anymore and I don't think this will work forever.
If you're comparing the combat to games like Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma, then yeah.. I can see how the combat would seem clunky. PB's titles are a lot deeper in general though.
AAA for me means open world technology, detailed environments, a lively, breathing world, exploration and all that things that are considered technically above average and therefor expensive to develop. I don't think, that story and consistency is part of that, because it's not necessarily that much about money (compare to indies). And I still have the impression, PB is aming for that goal. But I think their ambitions are higher than their budget and I'm unsure it they have a plan to solve that problem.On the contrary, I think PB's games are more AAA now then they've ever been. AAA doesn't mean better though.
I don't know if there is already a niche for mediocre games. I guess there could be, because Rebellion and Cyanide/Focus Entertainment still exist. But I'm not sure if I'd really like to play that games any longer. And it is a little bit sad to see that company drifting towards a direction I won't follow, because I think they lost track. They had a big influence on my gaming experience and on a personal level.