So Dungeon Keeper may be returning, as evidenced by not one but two trademark applications on EA’s part. My feelings on the matter are the very definition of ‘mixed’.
Of course I want to play a new DK game with ultra-graphics and drop-in multiplayer and perhaps even some degree of persistence (as I’m perhaps foolishly guessing any new take on the series would involve), but my huge attachment to a game I revisit at least once every 12 months has very little to do with the license – which was always broad, generalist fantasy with a satirical twist, rather than something howlingly unique. A new DK would be the same characters with a different team, and that means little. This isn’t that I’m lost to Bullfrogian retro-fetishishm – even the same theme with the same team mightn’t inspire me greatly at this stage. I want to be told this will be awesome, not simply this is happening.
Similarly, I have no fear that someone is going to foul up the license. DK means as much as it does to me because it was a perfect storm of passive observation and active strategy. Construction and action: two of the key pillars upon which my PC gamingdom is founded. What I want is the reassurance that the same values, the same degree of fun, will persist and be expanded upon, not that I get to look at a Horned Reaper with more polygons. Drooling fervour for old IPs is meaningless: it is the values that matter, not the characters. The underwhelming if fun Overlord games have proven that the evil-as-hero concept isn’t enough on its own.
Nonetheless, a possible return, even if it is only desperate hope based upon the renewal of a copyright, which surely happens all the time, is exciting. But it’s exciting because a rich company might fund a subversive, flexible, funny management game after years of the genre being neglected, not because I might get to see a Bile Demon with pixel shaders.
On the other hand entirely, I bloody love Dungeon Keeper.
Related Stories:
B&W2 was excellent for one reason, you were free to sacrifice everyone in your town including all refugee’s but still win the “good” way because an underpopulated town was more tempting to villagers.
Remember you get more energy from new born babies.
Alternatively keep the population in check by having your pet devour everyone. It was a shame the ai couldn’t be taught to eat old people, they are useless, and probably crunchy.
@Heliocentric: “Evil genius was a bit of a mess, but i hold high hopes for a sequel.” Now THAT is a sequel I’d love to see, because there is so much more that can be added to it! Even now I sometimes have a play, testing out base designs or maybe catching a snippet of a video that tells me how to make my base better. :) I think Evil Genius is recent enough that there wouldn’t be that much of a fuss over a sequel, but because of Dungeon Keeper’s age it’s now a relic of gaming.. or am I talking crap? :<
I liked both Black and White 1 and 2 . I could never teach my pet to do ANYTHING useful in B&W 1 and in B&W2 he felt less real for some reason like I really couldn’t teach him anything at all I dunno. I liked the city building aspect of 2 more so than 1 but the creature felt much less impressive. I never did play long enough for my creature to get huge like the lion in the first game.
Truth is I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it bollocks! Not compared to how people matter.
???? what?
Dungeon Keeper was the first game I ever played 18 hours in one sitting. After that I really never went back to it and DK2 didn’t get much playing time either. Anyway, my curiosity has been aroused. The idea behind it is excellent.
@Stupoider
I don’t think DK is a relic, as that would imply it was no longer relevant or playable against todays games but I for do still play it and its design holds up.
I really don’t know what to make of a new DK the more I think about it. Technically I should be pleased but a console centric, money grabbing, PC-game shafting bunch of degenerates like ES making a new DK fills me with horror. So, so, SO many games these days are just utter bilge and the more we resurrect licenses the more dross is generated (just look at the new Wolfenstein for evidence of that. It is unspeakable garbage). Cynical little ass grabs like EA just buy up old IPs so they can make a quick buck off of the name and I don’t see why this should be nay different.
Every time you mention DK, I get an urge to play. I really should put it onto my EEE.
@Sam: I seem to recall I never bothered picking up minions on the main map. If you want imps for something, you click on the idle imps counter, which gets you an imp who was otherwise doing nothing. Repeat as many times as you want. Then, drop them all somewhere. Same for all other classes.
Maybe the new one will have a “play as the heroes mode”?
And yeah, a multi level dungeon would be terrific.
Keeper, you have something unpleasant under your fingernail…
Someone should just sit down and have a good think of Dungeon Keeper and Majesty. There’s a new hit there somewhere.
Your dungeon is built on an incline. Angry monsters cannot play marbles.
I’m going to remain optimistic until given a reason to be otherwise.
That said I’m firmly in the “terrible sequels don’t ruin the original” camp.
@Blast Hardcheese:
That name.. a fellow fa/tg/uy I see.
For what it’s worth, DK2 has been slightly resurrected on GameRanger and there are a number of people that play it online.
DK2 wasn’t available on any online service before that.
DK1 isn’t there yet because it uses IPX rather than TCP/IP. That will take a little longer.
I fail to see how the argument that making a sequel in a franchise may kill the franchise makes any sense at all. I suppose it’s true that a crap entry in the series would make a further entry less likely… but never continuing the series at all makes it impossible. So, err, what’re you folks who are demanding that no sequel be made hoping for? Are you thinking that if you just keep DKIII from being made for long enough, DKIV, the game you’ve all been waiting for, will spontaneously create itself?
Note: I’ve read what I just wrote above like thirty times, because I’m hammered, and I think it makes sense, but somehow it just seems like the grammar is really weird and doesn’t work. I think it’s just because I’m not together enough to parse it. If it actually makes no sense… I apologize in advance.
@devlocke
We’d like it to be made by someone ELSE.
@Vinraith
When I read your comment then I was all “Yeah, screw EA” as I have been further up this thread but then, when I sat down and thought about it, I cannot think of any recent games that ES have totally screwed up.
I went and looked here: http://www.eagames.co.uk/gamesearch/*/5/0/0/
to see what there had been of late and while there are plenty of bad games there (endless Sims crud, Harry Potter pap, Spore (I know, personal taste, but its my posting =P), Mirrors Edge, LotR: Conquest, NFS: Undercover) that DO fall under the category of cynical cash cows, I’m not sure about the rest.
For every game that clearly has had EAs hand in it (the NFS franchise and its 12 month treadmill being a great example) there is plenty of stuff that has just been bad due to its own fault (Spore, Burnout Paradise and Mirrors Edge for my money) and plenty of stuff that has been good like the 2 Crysis games, MoH:Airbourne (No Allied Assault, but a decent return to form in a market dominated by COD), Dead Space and Mass Effect. Add in a bunch of (produced too quickly, I grant) sports games that I don’t care about but don’t seem to have been loathed by the general populace and I am a little less certain in my hatred towards EA.
Are we just angry with them for the speed they churn games out or is there something I am missing?
@Howard
Well, to the degree that ME is a good game I give credit to Bioware (and of the EA houses they might not be the worst pick for a DK remake, although I think that’s unlikely). As to the other examples of good games you give I have to be honest, I’ve not played them. I’ve played several of the BAD ones, but my opinion of EA output may be colored by sampling error.
Of course, their DRM behavior of late’s been appalling, so there’s that too. It’d be REALLY cute if DK3 turned out to be a GOOD game with a 2 install limit or some such nonsense.
Evil Genius a bit of a mess? Evil Genius is ace! Bought it a few weeks ago from Gog, on account that I’d completely missed it when it came out. Completely love it! Now I need to get Startopia too.
As to a new DK, I share the fears of many others about EA being the IP holders, but hey, you never know. After all they’re making C&C4 a pc exclusive, so they might be getting agrip, right? Right?
I love Dk2, and it still looks amazingly great. Top-notch animation really counters limited polygons. What I hope for is a Monkey Island style update, if it’s at all possible. And for Lucifer’s sake keep the original narrator – he was wonderful.
Killing enemies needs epic micromanagement. Also where dungeon keeper is paced towards trial and error the persistence of evil genius can mean your past mistakes haunt you. Also combat usually resulted in escalating pressure. Where combat in dk granted you vampires skellies and converts.
Wasn’t there a trailer made for DK3 shortly after 2 came out? it may have even been on the DK2 CD, or did I dream that?
Yep, it ended with Horny looking across a beautiful pastoral panaroma complete with rainbow and birds singing.
@Vinraith
Of course: their DRM. Yeah, that hasn’t been good ><
All I can hope is that they follow the roots of DK and base their game on on the dark, dank, grime filled corridors of DK1 and ignore that schmaltzy, disco-bright turd fest that was DK2. Also as this will obviously be a 360 release as well, I do worry for the control scheme. The grab and drop of DK will simply never, ever work on a gamepad so I physically recoil in horror when thinking about what they might do to this franchise.
As many people have said though, the promise of a new DK is better than nothing. Ah well, we can but see.
Half your time was spent retrieving flies from buzzing off and brining heroes to your dungeon
Mmmmm. Heroes in brine.
/drools in a meaningless fervour
For some reason, I don’t trust this thing. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like DK2 that much, it felt like a big step back from DK1. I’ll just keep waiting for Natural Born Keeper until there’s some actual info on this.
The little ‘Mwahaha’ sound when summoning an Imp is still my favourite ever in-game sound. I thought that was important for me to state.
While the sim dungeon building was always great, the progress model was too trial-and-error bound. You played a map until the end and only then were sieged by heroes to succeed or fail.
What I always REALLY wanted from the DKs was what the overworld map promised: conquest! The ability to progressively dominate the landscape and wage war would really put a strategic twist on your dungeoneering.
Lucas, hm?
The earlier maps, certainly.
But it introduced enemy keepers whose dungeon heart you had to destroy. Some levels had attacks from heroes from early on. And, of course, exploration was always rewarded with secret items.
I need to play now.
And so this article gets buried under countless other and nobody will give a crap about making another DK.
Also, i notice a lot of you claim DK 1 was great and the second sucked. Actually nobody said the second was better. I feel like such a young poser because i played the second first and loved it. Only tried the first years later when DK2 was already a classic for me and the graphics of the first seemed impossibly ugly (i’m a visual whore i guess).
Glad to see so many of you loved the series…but i really think nothing will come of this.
P.S. I remembered i played the remake for Settlers 2(I loved the first settlers aka serf city) which was as far as i could tell 99% like the original but got bored real quick of it. So maybe “more of the same” wouldn’t work because i grew up and the nostalgia is lying to me.
Josef Fritzl’s Dungeon Keeper, YAY!
DK1 was awesome, but the later levels were so hard! The bastard cheating AI comes in after 10 minutes and poos on me.
The graphics were awesome though. Full 3D possession. So much depth in raising undead, or converting heroes, levelling them up, fighting with them in FPS.
The way the dogs had black and white vision, and beetles had compound eyes.
Ahh like most of the rest of you I have got the fever again. I need to play Dungeon Keeper, but it probably won’t work on Windows 7 RC.
The sound of the Imps being summoned was indeed one of the best sounds in any game ever. The different vision for the different creatures was genius, though I hated controlling some of them because of it I think that made the game even better; things shouldn’t always be perfectly smooth.
I have to admit I am not sure I ever actually finished Dungeon Keeper; I believe I got to some final battle with lots of Heroes, but I could not say for sure that this was not in Dungeon Keeper 2 (which was most definitely NOT rubbish).
Just wanted to add that I too loved Dungeon Keeper (2! even!) and am glad to see Startopia mentioned as well. A game that still looks great today and another example of style > polys.
Maybe I should try that Evil Genius game as well…
“Impus neetool”
I enjoyed both Dungeon Keeper games but loved DK2; done right – respectful of character, etc – I’d be very interested in a third game.
Startopia bored me so much I only played it once then gave my copy away. It wasn’t genius so much as tedious and trying too hard to be funny.
Dwarf Fortress IS completely impenetrable. The user-interface has been designed by masochists, for masochists, ignoring every development, significant or not, in UI’s since the 1970’s. In fact, I suggest DK3 slyly references it as an option for torturing captured heroes – force them to sit down and play it.
You really have never lived until you’ve possessed a chicken then watched monsters celebrating a win in the casino with a rousing dance to disco classics.
I wonder if DK2 is on GoG, I miss that game and can’t find my damned copy.
@ Alez, I don’t think “a lot of people” are saying this second one sucked. Just Howard. Over and over and over.
I still remember how the original box came with a simple flier with the DK2 logo – and a a statement of license to use the song “Disco Inferno.” Class act all around.
They’re both some of my favorite games but I dunno about a third. What happened to the license for that Korean Dungeon Keeper mmo EA sold?
I didn’t know you could posses the chickens!
As far as DF being impenetrable obviously it isn’t otherwise no one would play it . . .