Spore-Inspired Action RPG Darkspore Announced

Today Electronic Arts announced Darkspore, an action RPG in development from Maxis that is inspired by Spore's creature creator technology. The game is due to launch in February 2011, and a teaser is available on the official website. A more descriptive video is available from EA's live demo (start at 8:25). Quoting Joystiq: "...Darkspore will let up to three players traverse 'several' planets cooperatively, and while there will be PvP in the finished product, Maxis isn't providing details just yet. The basics will be the same whether going in solo or as a team: You'll be able to choose from a number (again, no specifics yet) of pre-created melee, ranged and support creatures that can have their stats and abilities augmented by equipment. ... When choosing to beam down from your starship to a planet, you will see a lineup of enemy types that you'll encounter. This gives you and your friends enough information to decide which three characters from your collection you'll want to deploy. The trio can then be switched between on the fly, albeit with a brief cool-down period afterward. The idea is to use the characters' various abilities strategically against what the Left 4 Dead-inspired 'AI director' decides to toss your way."

Comments

It's illogical captain

[RenHoek]

If it really takes after Spore, galaxy upon galaxy, planets filled with walking cockmonsters..

I got yer PvP right here buddy...

Make Sim City 5 Already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxis please for the love of everything good in gaming make Simcity 5.

Re:Make Sim City 5 Already!

[Zedrick]

What for? Sim City 2000 is perfect, they should come up with new ideas instead of trying to remake games that can't be improved anyway.

Re:Make Sim City 5 Already!

[nyctopterus]

SC2000 was a great game, probably the best (that or Civ2) , but of course it can be improved!

  - Not being able to build on hills always seemed silly, and ruined the looks of many cities.
  - Commercial buildings were too short, you never got the feeling of skyscrapers popping up, that was a shame.
  - The rail network would have been more fun if you could put different sized stations in, and trains couldn't turn at right angles
  - The maps were too small, limiting gameplay (one you go good, you'd generally cover the map pretty quickly)
  - The game got easier as you went along, rather than throwing up new challenges (SC4 improved this somewhat as transportation became a real challenge)

I'd like to see a game like Sim City get regular releases, refining it's gameplay. It doesn't need fancy 3D graphics, in fact that make it hard to play, attractive 2D is fine. But give us real depth and flexibility, and a challenge even once the city is making money.

Re:Make Sim City 5 Already!

[moonbender]

Not sure what you don't like about SC4, but its reception was quite positive. It certainly improved on SC3k in many ways. Of course it's difficult to repeat the jump from the original SimCity to SimCity 2000. SimCity 2000 was just stunning at the time (for a 12 year old, at least).
Anyway, I really want to see a SimCity 5 with an improved transportation model (the heart of a city sim), a better representation of regions; ideally with modding capabilties up there with Civ4. As far as I understand it, SC4 wasn't very easy to mod apart from cosmetic changes, but the community has still come up with an incredible amount of results for the transportation engine among other things.

As good as Spore?

[gravos]

Wow, I hope this will be as good as Spore!

Oops, just kidding.

Re:As good as Spore?

[lxs]

Now you can do more than make penis-creatures. You can attack them too.

Not an RPG

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

While the PC-xbox-what have you market may have hijacked the term "role playing game" for its own profit, it doesn't represent any actual role playing, which is where you sit around a table with your friends and pretend to be a someone or something else to whatever depth you feel comfortable. And until you have near reality physics engines and near human AI, as well as full facial/vocal/auditory interaction, you won't get that (really really fun) experience either.

Re:Not an RPG

[azaris]

RPG nowadays means: Follow pre-scripted whiny one-dimensional stereotypes run around cliched worlds fulfilling repetitive fetch quests while having a tenuous chance at actually changing the course of events at one or two specific points in the plot.

Re:Not an RPG

[Japher]

So basically D&D, but in your own basement instead of your friends?

Re:Not an RPG

[GigaplexNZ]

RPG erroneously seems to be defined as "upgradeable stats" whether it is by leveling up or equipping better items. I'm also curious how modelling this game after the space era of Spore with precreated uneditable creatures is inspired from the creature creator...

Re:Not an RPG

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

RPG erroneously seems to be defined as "upgradeable stats" whether it is by leveling up or equipping better items.

Thats not a bad description of the original D&D actually, which was itself an offshoot of tabletop wargaming. Now you can get that sort of experience from a computer game, since its mostly mechanics, what you are capable of doing is quite limited within the confines of the game. More recent tabletop RPGs however are a completely different level of enjoyment, not even for the amateur theatrics but for the endless possibilities they offer. Like a particular book or movie? Spend a few hours setting up a world based on it and off you go with your favourite game system. Want to instead of bribing or fighting the guard at the gate, go into the woods and cast spells to get woodland animals to cause a distraction? No problem. Infinite adaptability, ad hoc creativity, limited only by your imagination, as different from computer RPGs as a computer game is from airsoft or paintball.

Re:Not an RPG

[_KiTA_]

While the PC-xbox-what have you market may have hijacked the term "role playing game" for its own profit, it doesn't represent any actual role playing, which is where you sit around a table with your friends and pretend to be a someone or something else to whatever depth you feel comfortable. And until you have near reality physics engines and near human AI, as well as full facial/vocal/auditory interaction, you won't get that (really really fun) experience either.

Um, wow. Welcome to 20 years ago.

Seriously guys, we're limited by the technology. There's a reason CRPGs and JRPGs are what they are -- it's just not feasible to make the kind of experiences you are asking for. Consider Mass Effect or Dragon Age, games that have hundreds of thousands of pages of text. Even they feel "railroady" at times. You can't join the villain, after all, because they didn't have an extra 5 years to write, script, draw, program, etc that scenario and the 500 sub-scenarios involved.

Ask again in 20 years when the idea of having a true AI (or 100) in a computer RPG will be possible, and we're seeing "The Elder Scrolls 8" with actual open ended, emergent gameplay. When you don't have to have a human writing each line of text, then the ability to "role play" becomes a lot more feasable.

Re:Not an RPG

[popo]

For the most part, I agree. Although property ownership, economics models, in-game reputation, character types, race, etc. play increasing roles. Freeform exploration is also a major plus.

Morrowind imho did a great job re: character types and freeform exploration. (Oblivion less so, imho because the world was more homogenous/uniform -- but that's just me, and many would disagree).

To date, no game has come close to Baldur's Gate II in my opinion. Where choice of party-members radically altered in-game conversation, side-quests, alignment and overall gameplay.

If someone were to say -- make a 3D version of BG2, I'd probably have to cancel my life for a few months...

You had me at EA...

[Datamonstar]

... Had me saying "I'm not buying it," that is. Sorry, but I'm not gonna put up with restrictive DRM and I'm not paying out extra for DLC. Even if this game doesn't have any of that, I'll still not buy it until EA starts making that the standard for their games. I generally avoid their games, since nothing has come out from them even remotely recently that interests me in the least bit, and while this does look cool (as did Spore) I'm playing two really good and well made online CCG's that are truly free, as in beer, and tons of fun. Give me a small company, making a small game that's just fun and nothing else and I'm satisfied.

Is this The Matrix or Starcraft?

[twoallbeefpatties]

Oh my god, I've just had a disturbing philosophical question - what if we're already in an RTS? What if the gods each spawn their own planets, raise their own creatures from cellular organisms all the way up, have them spawn and research technologies, and then lead them out to attack each other? The only reason we haven't seen any aliens yet is because the gods are playing, "15 millenia no rush gl hf!"

Based on what EA did to C&C 4...

[Emperor Shaddam IV]

Based on what EA did to C&C 4 - basically destroying the original concept of the C&C franchise - i.e. no tiberium harvesting and base building, I can only imagine that this will also be worse than the original Spore.

EA - frankly you are the worst software company in the world because you buy great software companies and take great games written by them - and slowly destroy the games.