By Craig Pearson on August 13th, 2012 at 7:00 pm.
Annnnnd the Gamescom announcements begin. First out of the block is Chaos Chronicles, a top-down RPG from the developers of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. You can tell they were eager to get ahead of the massive rush of games about to be dropped on us over the next week, the screenshots are so dire the only excuse is too much haste and not enough speed. I can see a cart with some vegetables in one. I can confirm there will be pumpkins.
There also appears to be a carrot, but it’s ludicrously out of proportion: am I looking at a parsnip perhaps? Is Chaos a potential growth agent? It might be what we’re looking at its part of ‘Vegetarian Mode’, to make things a bit easier for the non-meat eaters.
And what about this bed? The Chaos of the title has clearly taken over the cleaner’s rota, allowing the room to fall into disrepair, possibly while other rooms receive too much attention. That is wrong. Chaotic, even.
It seems to be treading the current ground that Kickstarter has made more fashionable: top-down, fantastic, turn-based, vegetable heavy, and there are some ogres and skeletons in one screenshot. Beyond the obvious placeholder art, there’s room on screen for up to five players to rebuild their broken world. It’s being touted as classic, but with a modern twist. While Jagged Alliance hasn’t been released yet, developer’s Coreplay did release the reasonably well received shooter Ion Assault. Does that mean this will be equally as well-recieved. My gut says “possibly”*.
*My gut also craves Irn-Bru, doner meat, and curry scooped up with prawn crackers, and is therefore not to be taken as a good judge of gaming quality.
13/08/2012 at 19:04 beetle says:
blowing up pumpkins in myth 2 is a thing that I remember with fondness
13/08/2012 at 19:40 Qwentle says:
Pumpkins just remind me of Rising Lands, and my poor archers starving to death before they could get home to get some food. That was a weird game.
13/08/2012 at 20:57 Subv3rse says:
“Casualty…”
Myth 2, now that was an old, classic game. The one that Bungie should be remembered for rather than Halo (Much like Epic for Unreal Tournament, or even One Must Fall / Jazz Jackrabbit rather than Gears :/)
13/08/2012 at 20:59 Dominic White says:
Myth 1 & 2 have been updated to run on modern PCs with a variety of technical upgrades, thanks to dedicated fans.
http://www.projectmagma.net/
There’s even a small modding scene still kicking away.
13/08/2012 at 21:14 Subv3rse says:
… Oh hell yes!
13/08/2012 at 21:26 Kaira- says:
… YES. Now I know what I’ll do tonight.
But seriously, now that Bungie is no more working on Halo they could maybe perhaps pretty please consider doing Myth 3? Please?
13/08/2012 at 21:58 Dominic White says:
Apparently they’re going to do a new Marathon first.
13/08/2012 at 22:12 Mungrul says:
Erm, there already is a Myth 3; the license for Myth was owned by 2K last I knew, and the developer Mumbo Jumbo released Myth 3: The Wolf Age in 2001.
I have it here. It was pretty good too, using the same engine except adding 3D models. Of course, it wasn’t what a Bungie-made Myth 3 would have been, but it’s still worth a go if you like yer Myth games.
Anyway, with Alex Seropian having left Bungie a while back now, I doubt that the current team has any of the original developers who were around when Myth was made. Marathon, Myth and Oni showed how story oriented Bungie were, and I suspect that any modern Bungie game would be nowhere near as intellectually stimulating story-wise.
For me, the old Bungie wrote the best stories in gaming; yes, even better than Looking Glass.
13/08/2012 at 22:22 Kaira- says:
@Dominic
Well, that could turn out interesting as well.
@Mungrul
Really? I didn’t even know about the existence of Myth 3. I guess I need to start combing the internet to find a copy of it then.
Also, speaking of Bungie’s storytelling capabilities, I’ve heard that Halos have rather good storytelling. Too bad I can’t really tell since most of the time when someone (read: Cortana/Gravemind) says something, I can’t really make out what they say since for some goddamned reason they thought not including subtitles in the games was a good idea.
13/08/2012 at 19:05 Unaco says:
They are pretty awful screenshots… but top down/isometric, turn based, fantasy RPG means I’ll overlook that slight. For now at least. I’ll put this one on my radar.
13/08/2012 at 22:24 Zeewolf says:
There are better screenshots elsewhere. Gamershell for instance.
13/08/2012 at 22:28 Tuco says:
Same here. I have always time to pay attention to an isometric turn-based game.
13/08/2012 at 19:05 RegisteredUser says:
..Captain?
Will there also be Angua? Not to be a Nobbs or anything.
13/08/2012 at 19:13 rapier17 says:
You’d have to be a Colon to think of that.
13/08/2012 at 19:33 Koozer says:
Don’t be so Ridcully-ous.
13/08/2012 at 19:44 ReV_VAdAUL says:
I wonder whether waxing lyrical about Discworld on RPS would impress anyone.
13/08/2012 at 19:50 RaytraceRat says:
Colour (of Magic) me impressed.
13/08/2012 at 21:37 Somerled says:
That one fell with a Thud.
13/08/2012 at 22:56 Milos says:
I felt Mortified when I read that.
13/08/2012 at 23:00 rapier17 says:
I shall Ponder further on this one. It’s left me feeling Hex’d.
13/08/2012 at 21:37 OtioseNexus says:
I Havelock a clue what you are on about there..
13/08/2012 at 23:24 rapier17 says:
Hat. Hat. Hat. I just like to Dibbler in this and that. I have to admit this is getting a little Bloody Stupid Johnson.
13/08/2012 at 19:07 Rao Dao Zao says:
Screenshot quality be damned, it looks very… 2D. In that good hand-painted Baldur’s Gatey sort of way.
… And then somebody tells me it *is* 2(.5)D.
13/08/2012 at 19:17 Shuck says:
Pumpkins, you say? Day one sale.
13/08/2012 at 19:22 acho says:
I love the atmosphere and the colors. Reminds me of the Souls games.
And I’m pretty sure Jagged Alliance BiA has been released already.
13/08/2012 at 19:34 abandonhope says:
They should have gone for broke and put the pumpkin in the bed.
13/08/2012 at 20:19 Aaax says:
The screenshots look very atmospheric, I like them for one. They could implement some dynamic fog, as if you tossed fireball to the second screenshot(sorry pumpkin lovers) you would see it’s effect on the fog.
13/08/2012 at 20:34 PoulWrist says:
Where is the carrot? I don’t see it :-(
13/08/2012 at 20:37 Unaco says:
Wouldn’t be much of a prediction by Craig if there was one already there, would it.
14/08/2012 at 06:50 Eophasmus says:
I spent a good minute scanning the full-size screenshot for the carrot based on this misleading quote:
Alas, time wasted; tricked by Craig’s lyrical vegetable ponderings.
13/08/2012 at 21:16 Aaax says:
The Pumpkin ate it! I take it as the evidence that the pumpkin will be the main villain of the game.
13/08/2012 at 22:52 Toberoth says:
Grand.
14/08/2012 at 00:19 Dances to Podcasts says:
I believe there’s a bunch of them hiding in that crate to the right, ready to overwhelm that big, evil pumpkin by sheer weight of numbers.
13/08/2012 at 21:38 Navagon says:
Well, if nothing else, this is the first game I’ve seen that’s set in Stoke on Trent.
13/08/2012 at 22:03 HisMastersVoice says:
Carrot with a capital C made me think someone’s making a Discworld RPG. Oh, the disappointment…
13/08/2012 at 22:48 Walf says:
I don’t think I trust anything by the people who made “Jagged Alliance: Back in Action”. :P Turn based or not.
14/08/2012 at 01:11 Aradalf says:
Jagged Alliance: BIA has been released already….. long ago……
14/08/2012 at 08:34 Llewyn says:
I wonder whether Craig was getting momentarily confused about Crossfire, the expandalone that’s due out soon. Or possibly he’s just burying his head in the sand, fingers in his ears, repeatedly shouting at the top of his voice, “There is no new Jagged Alliance game!” I gather BIA had that effect on some people.
14/08/2012 at 02:21 sdgsg says:
http://xib.me/ake
http://xib.me/ake
14/08/2012 at 06:13 Henke says:
Allow me to be the only person to say that I wish this game used JA:BIA’s Pause-time system instead of traditional turn-based.
Also, it looks like they might be using the BIA engine for this one.
14/08/2012 at 08:29 ItalianPodge says:
I’ll second that, BiA is definitely flawed (imho too much inventory micro-management) however the combat pause-time system worked very well and the graphics engine was more than functional, needs to have some work on the camera though.
I agree that it looks like the same engine.
14/08/2012 at 10:47 Lykurgos says:
I would prefer turn-based but am surprised that it shall be!
It seems odd to me that the developers would make *this* one turn-based after making a real-time with pause sequel to some of the best turn-based games ever made. I’d like to know what their rationale is.
14/08/2012 at 15:49 Kein says:
Clickable screenshots in the RPS’ article is my weakness.
24/08/2012 at 20:29 Trolkien says:
the developers have their own blog with many entries about old school fantasy rpgs and their inspiration to revive those kind of games: http://www.chaos-chronicles.com