PCG: Precursors preview

Experimenting with that old' photoshop reduction in quality thing. Precious bandwidth.

I see that the good ship C&VG has reprinted my short preview of Precursors from PC Gamer. It’s from my recent trip to visit Deep “Boiling Point” Shadows, and – since it’s quite short – I’m only really able to give a general over-view of it. I do say things like this though, as I’m a sucker for contextualising. “You could call it the Mass Effect effect if you were willing to bend history a little to make your theory fit. After a few fallow years, it seems that Epic Space Games are no longer an endangered species. Precursors, for example, heads off and explores a galaxy that’s been ignored pretty much since – ooh – Mercenary III circa 1992.” More here.

16 Comments

  1. 09/07/2008 at 10:55 phuzz says:

    (how do you feel about commenting here, about typos in the linked article? 4th paragraph, second sentence, should read “trusty AK47” not “trust AK47”)

    This does look slightly over ambitious, unless they’re going to use some kind of procedural generation they’re going to need legions of artists to create all the sundry planets. That or there’ll be annoying limts on how far you can go in any particular direction.

  2. 09/07/2008 at 10:56 Ian says:

    Surely this game is far too ambitious to work?

    I’d love it to work, but gaming turns you into a skeptic.

  3. 09/07/2008 at 11:08 cullnean says:

    ambition is what we need from dev’s these days

  4. 09/07/2008 at 11:38 Duoae says:

    Ambitious? It’s been in development for years now… I doubt it’ll be the most polished game in history – much like Boiling point was – but i think it’ll be fun and interesting.

  5. 09/07/2008 at 12:51 Sucram says:

    Don’t know enough yet to judge if it’s really over ambitious, while they are talking some big ideas it’s the details that tend to suck up the development time.

    I hope their goal is to make this game stonkin’ fantastic! rather then than just better something Derek Smart would make. So that if they fail, they fail wonderfully.

    Good luck to them.

  6. 09/07/2008 at 13:35 Caiman says:

    This is clearly an attempt at my Dream Game (TM), long imagined but never delivered. I never played Boiling Point, but judging by its reputation I’m probably going to be dreaming for a while longer.

  7. 09/07/2008 at 14:39 andy says:

    “rather then than just better something Derek Smart would make”

    not exactly ambitious!

  8. 09/07/2008 at 15:07 ape says:

    I have been aching for a good space adventure and hopefully this might be it. Though, judging from Boiling Point, it might also be a broken mess.

    I guess I’ll just go play Star Control II now.

  9. 09/07/2008 at 16:13 Pseudonym says:

    Speaking of what Ape said, calling it Precursors isn’t going to help steer people away from comparing it to Star Control II.

  10. 09/07/2008 at 16:44 mkreku says:

    Would have loved to read more about this game. Did you get to play it? How did it look? Far from finished? A snowball’s chance in hell of making it good?

    I know their (Deep Shadows) broken English must have been a barrier, but still.. this preview could have been written by someone who had never played/tried/seen the game. Like me.

  11. 09/07/2008 at 19:25 Deuteronomy says:

    Is the latest patched version of Boiling Point worth getting? It’s like 5 bucks on ebay.

  12. 09/07/2008 at 19:32 Jim Rossignol says:

    I had a lot of fun with Boiling Point, but even patched it is deeply surreal and broken. If you expect a kind nightmarish comedy, rather than an open-ended FPS, you might get something out of it.

  13. 09/07/2008 at 21:18 Deuteronomy says:

    I don’t know what to say about the Precursors concept except that it’s The Game That Had To Be Made. Seemless Sci-Fi FPS, vehicles, flight sim, RPG elements – it’s a game I’ve fantasized about making if I could make games. As good as Mass Effect is, it’s only a mockery of this pure and holy vision.

  14. 10/07/2008 at 05:45 DSX says:

    I’ve always longed for a KOTOR + X-Wing orgy where you could play ridiculously long campaigns as both an FPS and … Space Fighter Sim? (not sure what acronym to use). Throw in a Sins-of-a-Homeworld style fleet RTS system and I’d pretty much never play another game ever again. Except Diablo 3.

  15. 09/11/2010 at 12:03 Leafcutter says:

    This was finally released although only in Russian.

    Someone has revealed all the english text for the entire game as a community patch so if you turn the dialog down the game is very playable.

    In fact the game is very good, looks nice with plenty of diverse interesting content.

    If you guys at RPS read this post, take a look at deep shadows forum or http://www.spacesimscentral.com for more info and inform the RPS community at large… a hidden jewell if there ever was one.