By Alec Meer on March 22nd, 2011 at 7:55 am.
Armour has been polished, swords have been sharpened. Three-year-old Half-Life 2 mod Age of Chivalry has leaped into the shiny arms of the Unreal 3 engine as part of a plan to become a standalone commercial release, and jolly impressive it looks too. With this oil change comes a new name, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, which should give you a pretty good sense of what this game has in mind. The Sims: Medieval this really is not.
Do watch the trailer below for some crazy, crazy knights.
Kicking men in the testicles so hard that they fall off the edge of a cliff is alright by me. And in the game.
Chivalry is a class-based affair with a strong emphasis on melee combat (a particularly precise control system is promised), which should make a refreshing change from being repeatedly shot by a guy hiding behind a small wall 400 metres away. Better yet, siege weaponry such as ballistas and catapults is promised. And boiling oil too. Erk.
It’s more or less entirely a multiplayer game, which means it’s immediately facing an uphill commercial journey, but there are plans afoot for some manner of offline mode. More details on the official site.
Oh, there’s also a lore trailer if you fancy it. Worth a watch if only for the astonishing gravitas-wobble in the narrator’s voice:
For more of an introduction to the source mod, allow me to point you at John’s quick nose at one of its earlier builds.
22/03/2011 at 08:05 dorianGREY says:
definitely looking forward to this. The Mod was quite fun, just needed a bit of polish, and this looks promising.
22/03/2011 at 08:09 Longrat says:
Yay for melee combat! I hope this game ends up being good. The original chivalry was a cool game.
22/03/2011 at 08:17 MrMud says:
Obvious question: How does it compare to Mount & Blade?
22/03/2011 at 08:35 zimbabwe says:
Absolutely the first thing I thought of when I saw the coffee grinder helm… gameplay footage or it didn’t happen.
22/03/2011 at 08:42 kulik says:
Hard to beat the skillbased and satysfying combat system of M&B.
22/03/2011 at 09:38 Mattressi says:
The ranged is more satisfying, while the melee is less satisfying (this is based on my experience with the mod of course): ranged weapons have no crosshairs and require skill to use effectively, packing a nice punch as a reward. Melee does not have directional blocking like M&B, which is one of my favourite things n M&B, so the melee is much less satisfying for me. However, they’re talking a bit about new melee controls, so with any luck we’ll get some directional blocking in the new game.
22/03/2011 at 08:31 ceebux says:
Crazy knights indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6gaS9wrtM4&feature=related
22/03/2011 at 08:44 Jhoosier says:
Gotta love the pause on the waterfall. The most important thing for me in my medieval melee games is how the water looks.
22/03/2011 at 11:55 Sldook says:
Gotta love your comment as I had exactly the same thought at that part of video :D
22/03/2011 at 08:51 Phandaal says:
I’ve just been playing M&B warband MP for about 3 hours, and this trailer looks awful.
22/03/2011 at 10:12 Grygus says:
I’m not sure you understand what the word “awful” means. It doesn’t mean “almost as good,” or “second place,” or even “flawed.” If you think this looks “awful”, perhaps you are new to video games. You probably should withhold judgment until you’re better informed.
22/03/2011 at 10:31 Hedgemonster says:
@Grygus: this is the internet. Something is either “teh bestest thing EVAR” or it sucks donkey you-know-what like no tomorrow and should be purged from history as “teh worstest thang EVAR”. There is no middle ground.
22/03/2011 at 13:50 Orvidos says:
Probably because the middle-ground is littered with corpses. (Nyuck nyuck nyuck.)
That said, I did enjoy what I played of the mod. Commercially though? Hmm, something to watch.
22/03/2011 at 09:50 Lobotomist says:
I found the game sword fighting system quite bad.
Not even close to excellent swordfighting in Rune or Jedi Knight
22/03/2011 at 10:29 Hedgemonster says:
@Lobotomist:
It’s been a while, but I thought sword-fighting in Rune and Jedi consisted basically of “press left mouse button”, while hopping around like an idiot. Rune was also third-person, I think Jedi defaulted to that same viewpoint when wielding a light sabre, so I’m not sure how that compares to a first-person melee game. Mount & Blade, or Pirates, Vikings, and Knights, or Dark Messiah are probably better points of reference.
22/03/2011 at 12:33 Bedeage says:
@Hedgemonster: there’s still an active Jedi Knight community, and I can assure you there is a lot more skill to it than spamming left mouse button. All sorts of combos etc are required to win.
22/03/2011 at 12:39 Hedgemonster says:
@Bedeage: thanks for the clarification, I didn’t remember that. (Which should tell you all you need to know about my, ahem, “skill” at playing Jedi, back in the day!) I don’t think Rune was that sophisticated, though–all I remember from singleplayer is dodging and whacking enemies, and multiplayer for me was basically a cycle of spawning, getting killed, respawning, getting killed again, and so on. Which also tells you more about my appaling lack of skill at Rune than I would like!
I’ll stick to shooting (virtual) people, I think!
22/03/2011 at 13:24 Lobotomist says:
Rune was not very complex. But it worked perfectly. And that is what counts.
You dont need to give the game forced complexity that only justifies itself.
It had block and swing , with different weapons having different speed , reach and power. Shields that protected more or less and were faster or slower to rise.
Being 3rd person , you also had easier time positioning yourself and judging distance to opponent.
It was simplicity that worked.
Jedi knight added certain combos and force powers on top of that.
Both of them were easy to get into but hard to master.
So , dont discard games just because you didnt need to remember 20 combos only to swing the sword.
22/03/2011 at 15:33 Hedgemonster says:
@Lobotomist: I’ll try the games again. Like I said, it’s been a while! Thanks.
22/03/2011 at 09:52 Davie says:
I want to meet that narrator in person, so I can buy him a haaaaaam SAA-HANDWIICH!
Also, this looks exciting, and I loved the mod, but the animations are a little iffy looking. Hopefully they’ll improve those before release.
22/03/2011 at 10:58 Lacessit says:
He sounds like Brian Blessed on LSD! I couldn’t stop laughing throughout the whole vid. Not sure if that was the effect they were gunning for. Then again, I certainly HOPE it was.
22/03/2011 at 13:11 DeathHamsterDude says:
My god man! They need Brian Blessed! Why didn’t they get Brian Blessed?
Also, it’s an Alpha trailer, so I’d say it’ll look better by release.
22/03/2011 at 17:46 kutkh says:
I’ve never heard a man so irrationally angry at a “BANNNER?!?”
That trailer is the rarest of things: so awesome it’s actually unintelligible.
22/03/2011 at 10:08 groghog says:
Did anyone else get a Fable 1 vibe from the map in the first video? Reminded me of the guild
22/03/2011 at 10:09 Tei says:
I disliked the original mod. Part of it his sniping, and not being any good at it. The other part whas the rough “I am a half-life 1 mod” looking of everything. Even Mount & Blade looks more natural than that.
Moving to UDK could be a good thing, if use the oportunity to fix these things. But if make a mod for the current users of the mod (Something understandable) I will probably find the same problems again, and dislike this version too.
I would play a medieval mount & blade with the Bad Company 2 engine. So catapults rocks *Destroy walls*, and you battle on burning castles (and the fire destroy the floors, etc..). Somehow I feel UDK will not provide that, if not in a highly scripted and very limited way that is not fun to me.
22/03/2011 at 11:10 Sarlix says:
Chivalry: Modern Swordfare?
22/03/2011 at 12:06 suibhne says:
That’s a lot of leaping around for people wearing big metal plates and carrying massive tree-limbs of steel.
22/03/2011 at 12:26 dorianGREY says:
Have you ever worn computer generated armour? its pretty light.
22/03/2011 at 13:15 DeathHamsterDude says:
And that’s a bit of a misnomer anyway. Yes, armour was heavy and all, but people have been able to do backflips wearing full plate onto a horse, so . . .
Shazam!
22/03/2011 at 12:45 Basilicus says:
This is a fantastic and very blunt post-mortem by one of the AoC developers:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-chivalry/news/32-maps-released-and-a-reflection-on-age-of-chivalry
His (and my) big caveat was the movement system seeming very chunky and dispossessed. They fix that off the bat and they’ve fixed half the game right there. I loved the classes and maps in the original; it’s too bad the community all but died.
22/03/2011 at 16:00 Wilson says:
That is a very interesting piece. I would probably put myself as one of the players who got a bit put off by the skill difference compared to more experienced players. I don’t mind losing, but I don’t remember the game really grabbing me at the same time to make up for it. Mount and Blade is great fun, I guess Chivalry just didn’t feel as ‘smooth’ in terms of gameplay to me. Perhaps something to do with the movement system.
22/03/2011 at 15:42 FalseMyrmidon says:
Needs more bloom.
22/03/2011 at 18:31 fizzlesticks says:
keep looking! you missed a few commentable chivalry articles that you have yet to post this comment on.
22/03/2011 at 17:04 noom says:
As much as kicking a guy off a cliff via a swift boot to the gonads is an awesome endeavour, it’s not exacty one I would describe as chivalrous per se…
22/03/2011 at 18:36 Urael says:
Oh, this looks go-
Multiplayer online
*Yawn* Hack up your mates – as a Knight! Shoot up your mates – as a Space marine! Chomp up your mates – as a Dinosaur/Shark! Glad to see I bought a quad core machine for pretty leaves on trees, sweat on faces, and the ability to go one-on-one with my mates ad infinitum, isn’t it?
22/03/2011 at 21:50 Vandrel says:
If that video is anything to go by, PVK2 will still be more fun and take more skill.
23/03/2011 at 13:41 Dhatz says:
a.k.a. AC where you dont see shit because its in FP
23/03/2011 at 14:14 MrHairyLives says:
“King Argon grew restless with the piss…?” They all got drunk and started fighting?
23/03/2011 at 22:47 Spatvark says:
My main problem with AoC was that I only started playing it after I’d been at PVK2 a while. The combination of the lack of activity and the inferior combat killed it for me, but there were definitely things about it I like, such as the quests you need to follow to win a map, and the fact that they were clearly explained and popped up on the HUD. Too many hours I’ve spent raging in PVK2 at people not actually trying to win, but just DMing, so something like what AoC did was quite a breath of fresh air. I really wish I’d gotten into it earlier when I could have actually enjoyed it.
It’ll be interesting to see how C:MW matches up to PVK2 and its predecessor, especially since it’ll actually cost money to play, but I definitely believe that the team is capable of creating a damn good game that will be worth shelling out for. It’s all a matter of whether they can match or even exceed expectations now, I guess.