By John Walker on May 3rd, 2011 at 11:30 am.
Mostly I’m impressed with the tenacity of the title, Of Orcs And Men. That, and my discovery that the green-skinned RPG is developed by spiders. I mean, we’ve played games made by bears, and a couple of flops from raccoons, but spiders! I’ve been waiting so long to see what those industrious beasties could do. And it seems their first high-profile project is… wait, sorry, someone’s talking in my ear… Oh. Spiders. Well, good.
In fact, the audaciously named RPG is confusingly credited to two developers. For “Concept and Production” it’s Cyanide Studios, they behind Blood Bowl (and, I’ve just noticed, A Song Of Ice And Fire – will investigate), and for “Realization and Development” it’s Spiders. Their name just thrown into the press release without explanation or a link, leading to my oh-so easily made mistake. I want to like Spiders just because of their name, but that competes with their website having a tab titled “Solutions”. They previously worked on Faery: Legends Of Avalon, which came out a couple of weeks back, but isn’t available online until Friday.
So, Orcs. Along with Goblins they’re being oppressed. We’re told it’s,
“a brutal world at war, where the Empire of Men’s oppressive threat looms over the territories of the Orcs and the Goblins. Goblins are systematically persecuted and slaughtered, while Orcs not killed in battle are captured and enslaved.”
Pleasingly you play an Orc, with Man as your enemy. You’re charged with killing the Emperor in a major effort to win the ongoing war. You’re also joined by a Goblin, and the two will apparently have starkly different skill trees. The Orc a tank, the Goblin an assassin.
It’s currently set for a Spring 2012 release, published by Focus.
03/05/2011 at 11:37 Sami H says:
Obligatory WAAAGH!!!
03/05/2011 at 11:52 Perjoss says:
or Zug Zug,
depending on where you’re ‘from’
03/05/2011 at 21:53 The Army of None says:
Waaagh!!! indeed, sir.
03/05/2011 at 11:37 Inigo says:
Tell me about the kobolds again, George.
03/05/2011 at 11:47 Isometric says:
Fields of alfalfa for the kobolds, George.
03/05/2011 at 11:45 sasayan says:
Playing as an orc? Humans as the bad guys? I’m green with interest.
03/05/2011 at 13:52 Anthile says:
Wouldn’t that be like in Warcraft? Kind-of sorta-ish?
03/05/2011 at 15:56 Ian says:
Well, in Warcraft they’re just both sort of bastardy. I kind of hope they don’t cop out and just make orcs the good bastards in this. It’d be nice for the humans to be the ones you can point at and say “Yes, they’re the worst ones.”
03/05/2011 at 11:47 JackShandy says:
They torc the torc, but can they worc the worc?
03/05/2011 at 11:53 tomeoftom says:
I borced at that joke.
03/05/2011 at 12:35 stahlwerk says:
orcome on! That was uncalled for…c!
03/05/2011 at 15:59 pernake says:
Nicely orchestrated puns there. Absolutely orcsome.
04/05/2011 at 01:10 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Jokes of this nature wouldnt be to everyones taste but I for one goblined them up.
03/05/2011 at 11:47 DuckSauce says:
I’m currently reading a book that’s written from the viewpoint of two orcs, now there’s a game from the viewpoint of an orc. How interesting :D
03/05/2011 at 12:20 Tretiak says:
What book?
03/05/2011 at 13:07 Temple to Tei says:
Stan Nicholls and Mary Gentle both did them I think.
Mary had great promise but execution fell down in writing -still i remember the ‘heroic forces’ of light always winning despite having stupid plans, which was mildly amusing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunts!
Stan is actually an ongoing series, again did not like his writing much, so did not keep up after the first.
Any more that people know? I presume there must a be a few Warcraft tie-ins and such like, but looking for something more substantive. A believable world would be great.
The ecology of orcs always seems a tricky one:
1) Invade
2) Destroy Everything
3) ?????
4) Profit!
03/05/2011 at 13:41 bill says:
I vaguely remember reading Grunts a long long time back and being disappointed.. something about it just didn’t click… but then i was a lot younger then.
I have a very vague memory of a disturbing sex scene….
03/05/2011 at 13:48 MrHairyLives says:
@Bill
That’s the only thing I can really remember too. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget the line: “Pass me another elf, Sarge, this one’s split”!
03/05/2011 at 13:51 DuckSauce says:
The book I’m reading is called “The return of the orcs”, directly translated from Dutch, but it’s a book translated from German apparently, so something might have got lost in translation, but it’s a simple title, so perhaps not.
The author is Michael Peinkoffer.
It’s not really all that typical of a world really, I mean it takes the whole humans/orcs/gnomes/elfs thing but it’s … different.
The orcs in this got clobbered by some gnomes, but left alone because of some evil wizard scheme, when they return to their village without the head of their leader they have to go and retrieve it so it can be shrinked.
They then basically end up on going on a sort of typical hero quest, except it’s to steal something, but they fight the usual monsters, some barbarians, etc. So it’s a hero quest from the non hero side so far.
Overall it’s not amazing, but it’s a good read. I recommend it if you can get a copy of it at the library or something, but not really more than that.
03/05/2011 at 14:21 TillEulenspiegel says:
Ooh, I’ve been looking for some decent original German fantasy. I’ll have to check out Michael Peinkofer.
03/05/2011 at 15:02 Fumarole says:
I read Orcs by Stan Nicholls but didn’t like it enough to pick up the sequel.
03/05/2011 at 15:20 bill says:
Hmmm yes. That was it. That was a weird scene and is also the only memory i have of that book.
03/05/2011 at 15:21 BigJonno says:
The Warcraft book “Rise of the Horde” is worth a read. The way the orcs are manipulated into wiping out the Draenei and then invading Azeroth is well done.
03/05/2011 at 18:11 President Weasel says:
I liked Grunts!, although I’ll admit that the posters above may have a point about the writing falling down in places. I thought Mary Gentle wrote much better orc characters than Stan Nicholls, and I particularly enjoyed the sheer unremitting bastardry of her halfling characters.
Haven’t read any of the Warcraft novels, but to be fair the Dranei are annoying and clearly deserved everything they got.
03/05/2011 at 19:54 Felixader says:
Yeah i have that book, and i really wanted to like it but that rape scene where the antihero rapes an elfchild until it “breaks apart” and then demands a new one is simply overshadowing everything.
It fucking stupid scene wich kills every attempt to make the character likeable.
I mean there is all this amazingly funny stuff going on inlcuding figths and violence but every time you get to like him there is this scene coming back to the memory.
03/05/2011 at 11:49 BooleanBob says:
I love the smell of inverted dichotomy in the morning.
03/05/2011 at 19:14 Arglebargle says:
It smells like orctory?
03/05/2011 at 11:52 baby snot says:
That’s one handsome orc.
03/05/2011 at 12:04 jealouspirate says:
Because, as we all know, regardless of your race and skill colour you still need to be handsome to be the good guy.
03/05/2011 at 12:36 lurkalisk says:
…More than anything.
03/05/2011 at 11:57 bigtoeohno says:
This is worth watching, providing its fundamentally a good rpg. Being an orc fighting the damneded oppressive human is a big selling point for me, somehow i could see myself more immersed I don’t know more believable I guess
03/05/2011 at 12:02 jealouspirate says:
Could potentially be pretty good, but I don’t think “Oppressed Orc” vs “Racist Man” is as original or compelling as they seem to want to us believe.
Also, I’d like to play the Goblin!
03/05/2011 at 12:06 DeepSleeper says:
Everyone who works at Spiders is named Spider.
We should send them GIFTs.
Also, this RPG completely sells me on its premise. I am excited to be a big grunty orc.
03/05/2011 at 12:25 smokingkipper says:
Warcraft 3
03/05/2011 at 12:28 Teddy Leach says:
That title conjures terrible images in my mind.
03/05/2011 at 12:41 stahlwerk says:
… is a toy for green boys oh joy to see and hear this woven by arachnid brethren…
03/05/2011 at 13:13 Telke says:
Oh, man. playing a goblin assassin, or a big brute of an orc? I’m keen to see how this goes. love playing small, sneaky, morally dubious characters.
03/05/2011 at 13:39 bill says:
Sounds pretty cool. I’m interested…
03/05/2011 at 13:49 JKjoker says:
interesting, trying something new, yes, very interesting, this one goes into my watchlist, maybe Bioware can take a hint
and i like the art direction a lot, its nice knowing that at least *one* dev group accepts they are not going over the uncanny valley and stay in the cheaper and far easier to achieve “cartoony” first peak …. *looks at LA Noir* *rolls eyes*
edit: on a second look, the characters look awesome but the backgrounds look awful with extremely bad texture work, i hope thats a console thing
03/05/2011 at 13:53 DeepSleeper says:
Making video games gets so much easier once you get that pesky “ambition” out of your system.
03/05/2011 at 15:09 Fumarole says:
For those interested in non orc-centered fantasy with the bad guys as protagonists check out Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward. Here’s a summary:
03/05/2011 at 16:03 Thunderkor says:
This looks pretty cool. Makes me miss the epic bedtime stories I used to tell my son at night. The hero was the last orc, raised in a human monastery by kung fu monks, accompanied by his friends, a roguish human girl and a goblin wizard’s apprentice who was outcast by his kind for the heinous crime of *GASP* – knowing how to read!
Dang I miss those stories.
Anyway, hooray for non-human protagonists!
03/05/2011 at 16:46 Davie says:
Sounds exciting!
As does the game. Looking forward to this.
03/05/2011 at 17:30 zergrush says:
This makes me think about how cool would a game based on Orc Stain be.
03/05/2011 at 21:33 Carra says:
An of Ice and Fire game? Please tell more!
04/05/2011 at 01:40 Werthead says:
Cyanide are developing two SONG OF ICE AND FIRE computer games (they’re emphasising that it’s not based on GAME OF THRONES, the TV version, since they only have the rights to base things on the books). The first, A GAME OF THRONES: GENESIS is an RTS. It doesn’t look very good, but you never know. It’s due out before the end of this year.
The second, A GAME OF THRONES: THE RPG (working title, presumably), is an RPG (quelle surprise) which is due in 2012. It casts the player as two separate PCs, one on the Wall and one fighting in the civil war in the south, and alternates between them a bit like the structure of the books (except with only 2 POV characters, not 17). More info on Cyanide’s website.
05/05/2011 at 16:07 Gvaz says:
Do want.