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id, Raven Developers Discuss New Wolfenstein
CVG is running an interview with Kevin Cloud, executive producer at id, and Eric Biessman, who leads Raven Software's programmers and artists, about the upcoming installment to the Wolfenstein series. They provide some detail about what kind of weapons will be available, what those crazy Nazis are up to this time, and BJ Blazkowicz's new ability to "shroud" himself.
"Press a single button, at any time, and you'll see the other side of reality: a green and violent dimension that's filled with strange creatures and whirling tornadoes of energy. Just being in the shroud gives you options: floating above the ground are 'collectors' - fleshy heavy metal album cover worms that are scavenging electrical energy. Pop them, with a single rifle round, and they'll blast apart, damaging enemies in the real world. They are essentially exploding, hidden, organic barrels. ...In shroud mode, too, occult symbols etched into the masonry are transformed into holes in walls that BJ can simply step, shoot, or lob a grenade through."
3DRealms has had duke nukem doing this for ages now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can't get over the fact that the main character is called BJ.
The Long Now Foundation
Does anyone else hope that Id will throw in the original Wolfenstein gameplay, but with updated graphics?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Anyone else think that the shroud mode sounds a lot like the spirit mode in Prey? Especially the part about symbols on the wall changing into things when you go into shroud mode.
Wow, sounds like it gives new meaning to "god mode"
or a violence induced psychoses.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
the supernatural element has been in Wolfenstein 3D since Spear of Destiny. It's nice to see iD taking that just one step more.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'd really rather have another installment in the Hexen/Heretic series.
I understand that the Wolfenstein series et al. has never been about realism in the strict sense. C'mon, you can take ten bullets to the face and still shoot perfectly until you drop dead...
All the same, this does sound a little ridiculous. I realize that the Wolfenstein series has never been all that grounded in reality save the connection to the Nazis (see -- mecha Hitler, zombie things?), but really? Then again, it might give a nice shot in the arm to the vanilla WWII realism shooters... but I don't hold much hope out in that regard since Call of Duty II / IV have apparently wrapped up those two eras of warfare...
In any event, I don't care much so long as they make it fun -- I'm not expecting a seminal work of art here. It doesn't sound much like a breath of fresh air -- Prey did something similar three to five years ago? With id's idTech4 Engine (i.e Doom 3 engine), no less...
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
Well, blame the dumbshit gamers who keep making it profitable for ID/Raven to pump out the same derivative shit over and over and over and over again.
About Wolfenstein, it's best to just consider it a alternate reality WWII shooter, I don't think the game ever really took itself seriously so why should we, and that is where half the fun is.
Also it seems like FPS's in general have been trying more and more to make us use an extra-dimensional elements, PREY's spirit form and 'shroud'. What else could developers do to expand on the game play without overwhelming players? Any ideas?
(awesome game btw., highly recommended)
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
to go along with the shoot em up?
Or is that too much to ask...?
I don't know what it is with ID and their terrible 'revive our old games' thing.
Seriously, good as the engine was, doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. Obviously things had moved on in many ways, but it played more like an AvP knockoff to me, and not a well designed one at that.
Quake 4 was also pretty poor. There wasn't much to wolfenstein, so they can pretty much start from scratch and go any way they like. Looking at their recent track record in games sat atop their (undeniably excellent) engines, I won't be shelling out the pounds for this until its been around long enough to be cheap.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Enough B.J. Blazkowicz, let's talk about his grandson: Billy Blaze, best known as Commander Keen. How about a modern reimagining of the old games?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Before that, Soul Reaver had similar shifting between real world and spectral world, required to solve some puzzle.
Even "Spear of Destiny" (wolfenstein prequel) had a (scripted) shift to a parallel world once you picked said spear. (Although not an "at-will" ability used for solving puzzles)
And lots of old 2D games had similar "shift", as far back as SNES games (Zelda : Link to the past) and Megadrive games (Sonic CD had a system with past/present/future time shifts).
Shifting between alternate world isn't a new concept at all.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This also sounds like the "Scrye" spell from Clive Barker's Undying.
Shrouding into occult dimensions, really? Let me guess, the market is saturated with WWII shooters which are all a variation of the same thing, the same weapons, with the same game modes, and they really don't know what to invent anymore to do something even a bit different?
You just got troll'd!
Sounds innovative at first, but then I came up with two words to say about that:
my... precious!
stuff |
Well, I for one, have been faithful to Castle Wolfenstein, since it's Apple ][ debut. Yes, you guys think Castle Wolfenstein on the PC, I used to play it when it was really and I mean REALLY, 2d, maze like. It's gone a long way.
I don't want wolfenstein to be based on realism, in fact, the more Hitler/Nazis/Occult/Weird Science/Monsters we get, the better it is.
And of course, that BJ finds new types of weapons and defences based on what the enemy has been unearthing, researching, etc..., I love it!
Bottom line, I want to have fun, and I love the Wolfenstein series for that. It's fun! :)
I still have the PC version and I run it through DOS Box on XP.
As for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I have loads of fun with that, loved it!
So, a new Wolfenstein! YES!!
Remember our motto: There's a hole in the sky, through which things can fly.
Now you're thinking with Portals!
You appear to have some anger issues... care to talk?
Much of the fault lies with gamers for the lack of original games. If people stopped buying all the uninspired carbon copied lousy first person shooters that game companies are destroying the industry with, game companies would have to put their efforts into making original fun games. However, as long as people keep lining up at midnight just to be the first to buy games like Halo 3 it'll never happen.
I have nothing compelling to say
Well, at least they don't have monsters with Big Hair....or have any of the requisite Power Ballad levels to get out of.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Dude, it's an ID game. It's HIGHLY unlikely that it's windows only. Or you were trolling, of course.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Here's hoping for a Linux port, as id has been Linux-friendly in the past. And would that it is x64 as well!
Other than the "style" in which this was written, why is this marked "Troll"?!? The person is right. It's the same thing over and over coming out of the gaming industry.
:\
That said, would I buy another Wolf3d? Yea, probably. I bought the original and the "addon" 5 missions (I never did get Spear of Destiny, though), then Doom, then Doom2, RTCW, Doom3, etc. I've rather liked id's work from the very start. Doom3 was a rocky start, but it's OK these days. I guess it's not "ground breaking", but it's a departure from the norm.
I guess that's the best we can hope for these days; a departure from the norm.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Well, at least they don't have monsters with Big Hair
Not since Romero left at least...
BJ... Don't wear the ring! I know it's very tempting....
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
Rimshot used to mean something else back when slashdot was a forum for 'slash' porn.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't understand why everybody says Doom 3 was a 'demo'. It was not. It was an awesome game. Highly entertaining, as it kept the player on the edge with different events, an awesome atmosphere, amazing environments, high adrenaline etc.
...Call me when Raven are making HeXen III! I loved HeXen 2, all that dirty stained glass and plants etc, very cool atmosphere for its time. The Heretic games and Arx Fatalis (although good) never quite matched it for me.
Regarding Wolfenstein I thought Return to Castle Wolfenstein was OK, but not one of my favourites. This one sounds like it's got some interesting new ideas though.
Your ad here.
I just hope the keep and improve on the multiplayer aspect of the game. It was the best part and why I loved the game and particularly why I played it for so long. It really gave the game long lasting legs on which to stand.
I hope the take note of Enemy Territory and the team based multiplayer. Quake Wars is good, but I remember ET was the best.
Well, blame the dumbshit gamers who keep making it profitable for ID/Raven to pump out the same derivative shit over and over and over and over again.
Part of it is also they don't need to spend as much advertising it because word will spread just because its Doom X, RTCW X, Quake X. Secondly as a gamer series tends to reuse some code so hopefully (stressing hopefully) you will be purchasing a less buggy game that typically will have a decent (and reused) interface.
lol: You see no door there!
Wolfenstein used to have a simple and timeless premise: a Polish-Jewish supersoldier invades a Nazi stronghold and singlehandedly defeats everyone whose path he crossed, including a cyborg Hitler with rail guns for arms.
I don't see why they had to go and complicate the story with "shrouding" and "occult portals" and whatnot.
It's the same thing over and over coming out of the gaming industry. ... ... :\
Doom3 was a rocky start
I guess that's the best we can hope for these days; a departure from the norm.
I'm sorry every game doesn't blow your mind.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein had the best AI enemies I had seen at the time which made the FPS much more interesting. Enemies would lure you into ambushes, right after they had blow a clip on you and then gone around the corner to reload so you couldn't take advantage of it.
Doom3 is the first FPS to ever consistently make me jump as I played it at night, with the sound up.
Just because it didn't blow my mind like Homeworld, doesn't mean the gaming industry is failing us.
And I fail to see how you, linking to _your-own-post_, about how your video card was under powered and you didn't know it before hand by your own admitted failed assumption, constitutes a "rocky start" for doom3. According to your post, you were in line the day it came out. If you buy a game, pushing a new graphics engine, on the day it comes out, your aging video card might not be good enough.
What they need to do is increase the scale and realism. Let BJ drive vehicles. Make the environment more of a challenge. Have him learn some new fighting moves.
And that's why I specificly named the ones that did (among a couple others that I didn't mention)
I can do nothing but agree here! That's why I named those games; they were done VERY well. RTCW and Q3A still get a lot of play on my machine.
Because I didn't feel like typing it out again... :)
And I was far form the only one that ran into that. IIRC, A lot of gamers were pretty upset about it's performance (Google's not being kind to me this evening, it's showing me all the Doom 3 stuff from /. except for the launch-day story... :\ ).
At any rate, yea, my card was aging, yea I didn't expect to play the game at 1280x1024 / 32bit color / trilinear on a GF-4600. People have been lobotomized for thinking saner things, I think. But when a lot of the people buying that game ran into the same issue, I'd call that a "rocky start". It didn't last long. People upgraded their cards pretty quick, though. I hadn't the choice. Doom 3 (and Jedi Academy via Cedega) revealed that the fan on the GF-4600 had died and eventually burned itself up...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.