By Kieron Gillen on May 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am.
The 600Mb-and-a-bit Dracula: Origin Demo attracts my attention this morning on Gamers Hell, if only because of a splendid title line: “Can you imagine what it feels to be an immortal vampire, to love and hate eternally?”. Well, we’re not sure about the immortal vampire bit, but Alec especialy is well up to speed on the hate eternally thing. Not so sure about the love, as it sounds like it may involve hand holding and smelly girls, and we despise all forms of human intimacy. Anyway – haven’t had a chance to play the point and click adventure yet, but there’s a trailer out beneath the cut, along with one of those second-by-second breakdown things.
00:02: Title. “Dracula: Origin” with a subtitle “The Adventure Game” which is handy, because it sets us up for what’s coming next. Point and clicking, yes? If only other developers would follow suite in this clarity-over-all approach. Sins of a Solar Empire (The Space 4X-real-time game), Armageddon Empires (The Turn-based post-apocalypse strategy game) and Beowulf (The film game that’s a lot nob). It also suggests that there’s other Dracula: Origin games in Focus’ vaults – like Dracula Origin: The bejewelled clone and similar.
00:06: Epic music starts on slow pan across book shelves. Immediately you start to worry about how you’re going to get a dramatic trailer out of a point and click adventure.
00:08: Close up on newspaper and letter shoved beneath the door. Hmm. Also hope this doesn’t suggest a pencil/paper/door problem (SPOILERZ: Ever adventure game ever).
00:11: A bloke reading a letter. A Victorian lady playing a piano. A foppish looking bloke leaning forward in a chair. Since the cuts are happening every second or so, you realise the way they’re going to try and make a trailer is a series of rapid across rapidly more melodramatic music. And I’ll be damned if I’m doing a sixty-plus entry one of these to note ‘em all, so it’s going to be edited highlights from now on.
00:22; Relatively fancy fade effect of woman, tortured and writhing in bed faded over some country side.
00:26: Ooh! Cultists in a ruined temple worshipping some kind of demon god. DARK POWERS BEYOND OUR KEN 4 THE WIN, etc.
00:28: A close up in a aged book of what I think is Onions for a second, before realising it’s more likely to be Garlic.
00:31: A completely empty street, which looks like Assassin’s Creed after a bomb scare.
00:34: Was that Lenin?
00:38: Music picks up. Horse and carriage racing.
00:44: Really rapid cuts leading to sexy lady walking towards us.
00:46: Obvious follow on from sexual titilation: Man walking towards a bookshelf. Bookshelves make me hot.
00:48: Rocks falling in a rockfall.
00:53: Music picks up again. Foppish bloke turns towards camera, determinedly.
00:54: Hunchbacked ugly dude opens door, holding a lantern. It’s Egor! Win!
00:58: Lots of hard cuts between people picking up weapons, hammering in stake (USE STAKE WITH COFFIN) and someone running around on fire.
00:59: Sexy woman has fangs. I knew it. I bloody well knew it.
01:00: An alligator. Or a crocodile. I can’t examine its teeth it appears so quick. The alligator being the totemic animal of the vampire is well known, of course.
01:03: A really awesome zoom on Igor’s face. Yay! I’d play any game where I got to be Igor.
01:06: The bloke reading a letter is back for some reason in a hard cut. Why?
01:08: Trailer ends with a picture of the box, which features the foppish guy lying back on a sofa – or probably, due to incredible foppitude a Chaise Lounge – and looking like he’s about to get out his Keats anthology. Or have sex with someone he probably shouldn’t.
01:09: Screen starts to darken. Mocking laughter!
01:11: “All you need to know is on www-dracula-origin.com” Which is in the most blood-smeared font they could find, which makes it look quite scary before you realise it’s just plugging the website.
More on Dracula: Origin’s website, apparently, because that’s what websites are for.
31/05/2008 at 11:17 FredrikFtw says:
Vampires! Hawt!
31/05/2008 at 11:56 Saflo says:
“Use stake on heart”
31/05/2008 at 12:49 dances_with_ninjas says:
But does he has mewn baes?
31/05/2008 at 12:51 Masked Dave says:
God the writing in this game is awful. Everyone speaks as though they are dictating their memoirs rather than having a conversation.
And why the hell does Van Helsing (the player character) need to keep talking to himself so much? I get what’s going on! I’ve been here too!
Also, the plot here is entirely different to Dracula’s. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes me wonder why even bother using it.
31/05/2008 at 12:58 Masked Dave says:
Oh great, now he’s not letting me leave room because he is “missing certain pieces of information” and has “not inspected everything”.
Click on everything time? Fuck that. DEMO OVER.
31/05/2008 at 13:08 Dinger says:
Well, the puzzles don’t involve reading ancient tomes. Both “manuscript” images featured the same text, in italian (not even Latin, tisk tisk), over and over.
31/05/2008 at 13:12 dances_with_ninjas says:
That crash zoom on Igor just gets better every time I see it.
31/05/2008 at 13:32 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Took me a while to realize that the vampire lady was actually not-entirely-naked.
That almost distracted me from Masked Dave’s summary of his demo experience, which in turn put me off the prospect of trying it out.
Never was a fan of the overly-clicky sort of Adventure Game. By “overly,” I mean “Crap, what pixel do I have to poke now?”
31/05/2008 at 14:07 Sander says:
Can’t have been the real Lenin, surely. Isn’t this more what he looks like, now?
31/05/2008 at 14:34 Matt says:
I haven’t played the game yet but the “Everyone speaks as though they are dictating their memoirs rather than having a conversation.” quote actually sounded interesting.
Do you mean it is bad dialogue? Or is it playing with the “Dracula” style of writing. Bram Stoker’s book being entirely constructed from characters letter and journal extracts.
Also shouldn’t old Dracula related manuscripts be in Hungarian, Romanian or Turkish or something? Assuming it is related to the book it is taking its name from.
Just curious. Maybe I should just try it I suppose.
31/05/2008 at 14:42 James says:
“Bookshelves make me hot.”
See, *these* are the things we need on the About the Editors page. The world needs to know!
31/05/2008 at 16:07 Taximan says:
Igor =! Renfield. As played by the stunningly awesome Tom Waits in Coppola’s film.
31/05/2008 at 16:47 Ryan says:
Yes! Vampires, it’s been a while. My favorite- “A completely empty street, which looks like Assassin’s Creed after a bomb scare.”
Ryan
lessons in brevity: http://www.mofata.com
31/05/2008 at 17:17 TychoCelchuuu says:
That “red line on map” thing in the trailer makes this game remind me of Indiana Jones, only instead of an archaeologist you’re a vampire and instead of fighting Nazis you fight tedium.
31/05/2008 at 17:31 Mischa says:
Another “DEMO OVER” moment: scraping the moss from a headstone in order to reveal some dates needed for a code. Fair enough.
After some scraping I can read the date and figure out the code. But no, the game does not let me enter it: I have to continue clicking on the moss until the game decides that enough moss has been removed to read the dates…
Also, I’d rather play a vampire than a vampire hunter.
31/05/2008 at 18:57 Valentin Galea says:
Looks like a ripoff of Haunted Grounds for PS2! l love that game btw:)
31/05/2008 at 22:08 nakke says:
GOTY 2008!
Whatever happened to Peggles, btw? :(
31/05/2008 at 22:46 James T says:
I always thought 1 Peggle should equate to the file-size of the Peggle installer. But instead, it means any old thing! It’s all part of that insidious MORAL RELATIVISM that
right-wingers tar everyone clearer-headed than themselves withis tearing society apart!!!31/05/2008 at 22:49 propanol says:
sewage and muck ooze under foot!
01/06/2008 at 02:08 GiGinge says:
I dunno I’m a big fan of point n click games and I loved it, the puzzles were satisfying to work out but not too tough, and the backgrounds were beautiful. Wasn’t THAT keen on the voice acting but apparently they’re improving that.
Also, Masked Dave, I’m pretty sure there’s an option to highlight all the hotpoints on the screen to save the pixel hunting. I dunno, I really enjoyed the demo and really wanna get the full game now
01/06/2008 at 20:48 Kadayi says:
LoLs
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