And the cyberpunk renaissance marches on....
That looks friggin' awesome! Really, the first MMO I have seen in a long while that is definitely trying to do something different and wonderful. I mean, a virtual chess world?!? God, you know where I am gonna be!
But seriously, this seems like it could be an absolutely fantastic experience. However, it also seems like a horrifically complex project to undertake. Here's hoping they can pull this off!
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
Doing some more digging. I found out that this game was put in motion back in 2008!
Otherland - Preview
I like the sound of this:Talk about strange bedfellows.
A German publisher of games and children's software, without a major hit to its name and with no experience in online gaming, committing tens of millions of Euros to the development of what it hopes will be a triple-A MMO. An American author of doorstop science-fiction and fantasy novels seeing his work adapted for the first time. A bunch of talented, dispossessed Australian developers, striking out in a new field and a new country, with a truly international team. A wealthy Asian city-state looking to compete with its neighbours and foster an entertainment industry of its own.
If all that doesn't sound out-there enough, wait till you get a load of the game they're making. This is no World of Questhammer: The Rune Crusade. Otherland - from the books by Tad Williams - is a mind-bending concept. For want of a better soundbite, let's call it the first cyberpunk MMO: a virtual world about virtual worlds, in which your avatar is an avatar, the NPCs play NPCs, and you explore a multiverse in which you might be in realistic historical surroundings one minute, and cartoon fantasy ones the next. Everything changes, even your own appearance, and nothing is even pretending to be real.
And this just sounds awesome:These social areas also act as a stealth lobby system, where "hosts" will cross-reference players' data, and suggest quests in Otherland's multiple realities to them. Most quests will be set by NPCs, and have risks associated with failure - a reluctance on the NPC's part to offer it again, for example. But there will be player-generated quests too, which you'll be able to charge an in-game fee for access to, in a sort of lottery system.
All this is so mind-bendingly original, I wonder if they can really make a coherent game out of the concept? And, even more importantly, if they can, will the WoW crowd embrace it?Telemorphic capacity is what will allow you to change your own appearance, modify the stats of your virtual equipment, morph your gun into a sword, and adjust your avatar's abilties as you see fit (though there may be some specialisation later on) in an advancement system that Real U describes as "very organic and deep". It's all about bring able to suck information from the world around you -and that includes other players, who you can "hack into" in order to steal their information, take or copy their items, or plunder their virtual remnants after "death". The lower your telemorphic capacity, the more of the "real you" you expose, and the more vulnerable you are (not just in combat - NPCs or players might decide not to do business with you, for example).
Computer viruses will be a key tool. These can be bought from places like the Bazaar, plundered from enemies, generated through a crafting component of the game, and traded much like traditional MMO equipment. There will be situations where you'll want to infect hostiles with a virus, or even yourself; you can protect yourself from them with colour-coded shields, or by trying to outrun the "data ghost" goes that passes on the infection. Another tool will be the "Zoomer", an avatar mod that acts as a sort of data-capture sniper-rifle, capturing snapshots of the world and mining them for information. It will lock onto targets, but locking on will set off alarm bells for the victim.
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
Yeah, that's a really impressive trailer. So at least we know they have some talent working on the trailer! The question, as usual, will be whether the talent working on the rest of the game can keep pace...Originally Posted by Scott Tortorice
But yes, that's got to be one of the most strikingly original things I've ever seen on video.
John
GameSpy got themselves an exclusive trailer:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/otherland/1210808p1.html
Otherland is shaping up to be an MMO like no other; based on the immensely popular Otherland tetralogy of novels, even the virtual environment within is reason enough to sit back and stroke your chin beard in curiosity. We've just got our mitts on an exclusive behind-the-scenes video that shows why this isn't yet another WoW clone.
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
Never heard of the books it's based off of (quite long ones at that!) but that looks simply amazing. Like a guy told me the other day, "it's all about presentation." I really hope they pull it off.
"No one said it was gonna be easy! If it was, everyone would do it..that's who you know who really wants it."
Good Tunes
New trailer:
I really can't wait to get into that chess world.
Burke's Joystick: Because Edmund Burke would have been a gamer!
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