Republic - The Revolution Analyzed

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Gamespot hands-on preview of the PC strategy title Republic:The Revolution. This Elixir-developed game, which has had a legendarily long development cycle and has previously drawn flak for claims of an 'infinite polygon engine', looks somewhat unorthodox, with Gamespot offering only qualified praise, and mentioning that it's "..an unusual strategy game, in that it focuses on the world of politics.. Republic transports you to the fictional former Soviet republic of Novistrana, where taking on the establishment requires.. ..extreme measures." You can even visit the official Novistrana website if you'd like to learn more about the (fictional) country featured in the game.

Comments

Re:Screenshots

[AllenChristopher]

Look at all this architectural detail:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/republictherev olution/screens.html?page=11

Look at how the draw-in distance is so further out than where houses are spots:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/republictherev olution/screens.html?page=9

I believe that's what they're talking about. The total polygon count for that city is huge, and you can just keep zooming out from where you see fence-posts, windowpanes, and doors with inset panels to where you see row-housing stretching out to the horizon. It's not about a high poly-count when you're looking at a single person, like in an FPS set in industrial tunnels, but about the entire world.

I must point out that the people have individual fingers, so the close-up poly-count doesn't stink either. It's just not a shiny colorful UT2K3 game. It's a detailed city in post-Soviet Europe, a god game where you can go and see your subjects' fingers. The SimCity people have only been dreaming about doing this.

Re:Cyrillic

[danila]

There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.

The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.

In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.

Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)

The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.

Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).