I see that the good ship C&VG has reprinted my short preview of Precursors from PC Gamer. It’s from my recent trip to visit Deep “Boiling Point” Shadows, and – since it’s quite short – I’m only really able to give a general over-view of it. I do say things like this though, as I’m a sucker for contextualising. “You could call it the Mass Effect effect if you were willing to bend history a little to make your theory fit. After a few fallow years, it seems that Epic Space Games are no longer an endangered species. Precursors, for example, heads off and explores a galaxy that’s been ignored pretty much since – ooh – Mercenary III circa 1992.” More here.
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(how do you feel about commenting here, about typos in the linked article? 4th paragraph, second sentence, should read “trusty AK47″ not “trust AK47″)
This does look slightly over ambitious, unless they’re going to use some kind of procedural generation they’re going to need legions of artists to create all the sundry planets. That or there’ll be annoying limts on how far you can go in any particular direction.
Surely this game is far too ambitious to work?
I’d love it to work, but gaming turns you into a skeptic.
ambition is what we need from dev’s these days
Ambitious? It’s been in development for years now… I doubt it’ll be the most polished game in history – much like Boiling point was – but i think it’ll be fun and interesting.
Don’t know enough yet to judge if it’s really over ambitious, while they are talking some big ideas it’s the details that tend to suck up the development time.
I hope their goal is to make this game stonkin’ fantastic! rather then than just better something Derek Smart would make. So that if they fail, they fail wonderfully.
Good luck to them.
This is clearly an attempt at my Dream Game (TM), long imagined but never delivered. I never played Boiling Point, but judging by its reputation I’m probably going to be dreaming for a while longer.
“rather then than just better something Derek Smart would make”
not exactly ambitious!
I have been aching for a good space adventure and hopefully this might be it. Though, judging from Boiling Point, it might also be a broken mess.
I guess I’ll just go play Star Control II now.
Speaking of what Ape said, calling it Precursors isn’t going to help steer people away from comparing it to Star Control II.
Would have loved to read more about this game. Did you get to play it? How did it look? Far from finished? A snowball’s chance in hell of making it good?
I know their (Deep Shadows) broken English must have been a barrier, but still.. this preview could have been written by someone who had never played/tried/seen the game. Like me.
Is the latest patched version of Boiling Point worth getting? It’s like 5 bucks on ebay.
I had a lot of fun with Boiling Point, but even patched it is deeply surreal and broken. If you expect a kind nightmarish comedy, rather than an open-ended FPS, you might get something out of it.
I don’t know what to say about the Precursors concept except that it’s The Game That Had To Be Made. Seemless Sci-Fi FPS, vehicles, flight sim, RPG elements – it’s a game I’ve fantasized about making if I could make games. As good as Mass Effect is, it’s only a mockery of this pure and holy vision.
I’ve always longed for a KOTOR + X-Wing orgy where you could play ridiculously long campaigns as both an FPS and … Space Fighter Sim? (not sure what acronym to use). Throw in a Sins-of-a-Homeworld style fleet RTS system and I’d pretty much never play another game ever again. Except Diablo 3.