By Kieron Gillen on September 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am.
We have no idea how good or bad this is going to be – it’s certainly low tech – but it’s certainly interesting. Pioneering: Explore The Early American West is a first-person episodic RPG where you explore the far reaches of the martian colonies. Sorry – misread the press release. Apparently, it’s the American revolution. You play a settler, who is trying to achieve life-goals, via owning property and marriage. In other words… God knows. The 150Mb demo is available now, and the first episode soon (With episodes offering 2-4 hours of game). And for a taste, here’s the trailer…
18/09/2009 at 11:16 Jim Rossignol says:
Fists! Awesome.
18/09/2009 at 13:21 GibletHead2000 says:
I’m disappointed he didn’t punch the first lady he walked up to in the face. He looked like he was going to.
18/09/2009 at 17:48 Pod says:
Why don’t you guys glow any more? :(
18/09/2009 at 11:23 Spinex says:
It made my eyes cry. Black void shadows ftw!
18/09/2009 at 12:11 Jonas says:
I have to agree. I can live with the ancient graphical tech if the gameplay, story, and setting is good enough, but these levels are in desperate, desperate need of better lighting. Hell, even some ambient zone lighting would be preferable to those shadows.
18/09/2009 at 11:28 Spriti of Whisky says:
Go West Guy seems to be rpetty angry.
Why is that?
18/09/2009 at 11:29 RARGPHLAM says:
When I first saw the pig, my kneejerk reaction was OH GOD POLAR BEAR.
Then I realized it was a pig, and was very confused as to why it was shot.
18/09/2009 at 11:42 Orange Required says:
In the American West, pigs were often used to level up settlers too weak to fight on the frontlines. They were also harvested for their valuable gold coins.
And that’s a fact.
18/09/2009 at 11:32 ordteapot says:
What unseen anger drives our protaganist to clench them so? Maybe he’s just infuriated by the city planning.
18/09/2009 at 11:40 Lh'owon says:
That looks terrible. I want to play it.
18/09/2009 at 11:47 Bobsy says:
I’m quite sure there was no American revolution. The colonials got a bit riled up over some dodgy taxation and we went over had a civilised chat, came to an agreement. Specifically, an agreement that they would shut up and we would stop bayonetting them in the hips. Sure, we let them have what they THINK is a “declaration of independence”. But read the fine print, people! Not our fault if Big Johnny Hancock scrawled all over it.
18/09/2009 at 12:57 phil says:
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the declaration, asides from the apparently numerous secret codes, maps, diagrams and saucy limericks written on it in invisible ink, is the reference to the “present King of Great Britain” as the force they are confronting. It was the only the then current regent not Great Britain the initial rebellion was rejecting, then things got a little, well, intense.
18/09/2009 at 11:51 yhancik says:
Is that a prepreprepreprepreprequel to Redneck Rampage ?
18/09/2009 at 12:01 rhubarb says:
This is removing the urine.
18/09/2009 at 12:01 Christian says:
Hooray for 2-dimensional bushes.
Also: where did the
sheepreally a pig? go after being shot? Shouldn’t it have left at least a spoon or fork or the afore-mentioned gold coins?I didn’t understand what was going on, but I’ll definitively download it and have a look this evening. Seems like the weird kind of funny.
18/09/2009 at 12:56 pauleyc says:
Hooray for 2-dimensional bushes.
A truly jaw-dropping moment. The ultra-black shadows are one thing but this…I am almost disappointed they went for 3D models of NPCs instead of sprites.
18/09/2009 at 12:37 jti says:
If I’d been playing on that video it would’ve been twice as long, because I’d get lost into those shadows all the time. This has to be a joke! Please. Anyone. Tell me, it’s a joke.
18/09/2009 at 13:06 starclaws says:
Good idea. Bad Execution.
*Shadows
*Running like a boxer
*Pigs don’t fly… They just die and disappear
*Area is all canyon limited
Love the idea though… Looks interesting… Could of been breakthrough but came out broken like too many games now-a-days.
18/09/2009 at 13:34 JuJuCam says:
Not the remake of Oregon Trail we were all hoping for then…
18/09/2009 at 13:48 Magjam says:
… Could of been breakthrough
No, it “could have” or “could’ve”.
It is never COULD OF!
How can this happen, you may wonder. Easy: Say the contraction “could’ve” (for “could have”) out loud. Hear it? It sounds like “could of,” and if a person is a bit careless about his writing, he could easily write it as he hears it. But “could” is an auxiliary (helping) verb in a verb phrase. The word that it “helps” must also be a verb, of course. Is “of” a verb? Well, just try conjugating it: I of, you of, he/she/it ofs, we of, you of, they of. I don’t think so.
By the way, the same goes for “should’ve” and “would’ve.” But you knew that, didn’t you?
/grammar police signing off
20/09/2009 at 01:20 TeeJay says:
@ Magjam
I guess you quoted that from here:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/couldof.html
(which maybe explains why you didn’t notice “your” own mistakes)
20/09/2009 at 01:22 TeeJay says:
@ Magjam
You quoted that from here: http://grammartips.homestead.com/couldof.html
(which explains why you didn’t notice “your” own mistakes)
18/09/2009 at 14:03 manintheshack says:
You sound like a man who encounters bastardization of the English language quite alot, Magjam.
18/09/2009 at 15:37 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Which isn’t at all surprising, or is it, manintheshack?
18/09/2009 at 17:09 shiggz says:
I’m aching for an rpg of “Oregon trail”. You walk along the wagon and stuff happens. Of course you could crawl up in the wagon and fall asleep to advance time and you’d be woken up when some advance happens. You could play as a doctor, trader, soldier, farmer etc..
18/09/2009 at 17:38 Chaz says:
1776, a time of high contrast and dark shadows.
18/09/2009 at 17:50 Pod says:
When I saw that screenshot, I immediately wanted to ride them down on my horse. What has mount&blade down to me? :(
Also: The description sounds very much like “The Guild” (also sequel). Did anyone play this? Quite fun, but ran terribly slow on my old pc.
18/09/2009 at 20:33 Kanamit says:
Yeah, I played the Guild 2. A lot of great ideas with poor execution and some of the worst optimizing I’ve seen.
18/09/2009 at 20:26 Bobic says:
OCD
18/09/2009 at 21:00 Altemore says:
Are there any games where you play as a settler on mars? Because if not, one should be made a.s.a.p.
And I don’t mean a shooty shooter where you happen to be a guy who settled on a rock called mars, I mean a game where you do some settlin’
19/09/2009 at 03:16 Ed says:
We don’t have none of that fancy-pants ambient lighting or high-falootin’ pixel shaders here in 1776, boy howdy!
19/09/2009 at 06:31 Oak says:
Explore the early American West in an invisible car.
19/09/2009 at 12:54 Andy says:
Ahhhh the music!!
Quick hide before hillbillies come to rape us!
19/09/2009 at 13:13 ACardboardRobot says:
Both those games were incredible. Anyone who says otherwise should be ruthlessly hunted down by a ravenous pack of wild truffle pigs and snuggled to death.
19/09/2009 at 13:14 ACardboardRobot says:
That was about the Guild games by the way.
20/09/2009 at 05:28 Blather Blob says:
Do you think in the full game you can actually enter a door and have a title card pop up saying “The Frontier is at War” and find yourself clutching a rifle, staring down a tunnel at an angry miner? Because I think it should definitely have that.
20/09/2009 at 07:13 Oak says:
“In Anno 1776 war was beginning.”