The future is looking very bright for Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera developer inXile. Very bright indeed. Two wildly successful Kickstarters and one nearly complete, maddeningly exciting game later, Brian Fargo and co have finally found their niche. Or rather, they've settled back into the comforting clockwork of an old wheelhouse, an old home. But the road to this point was hardly an easy one. The developer-publisher relationship has always been rather skewed, and inXile's taken its fair share of licks. Some times have been good (see: The Bard's Tale), and others, well, others have been Hunted: The Demon's Forge. The latter, especially, is a sore spot for Fargo, but he's been burned by various publishing arrangements far more than once. He and I discussed that subject, whether Kickstarter is inXile's permanent solution to that problem, and tons more after I saw Wasteland 2. It's all below.
]]>This article over on Gamasutra is a little skewed by its title, "How RPGs Were A 30-Year Detour", because inXile's president Matt Findley doesn't actually say that specifically, but it's interesting and provocative all the same. What he said was this: "Well, you know, we analyzed the long history of video games. I think these games always wanted to be action games at their heart. I think all those old turn-based games, it's just that's all the technology would allow."
Controversy! Some thoughts on that below.
]]>Oof, there's some glossy production on the two "making of" videos of Hunted: The Demon's Forge you'll find beneath the jump, including Lucy Lawless doing a piece to camera on what "the great thing about Hunted" is. Disappointingly, she doesn't go on to say that Lucy Lawless is the great thing about Hunted. I bet she's reading this and kicking herself.
Bethesda really are pumping the handles of the hype machine as hard as they can for this one, aren't they? Alec and I have both played it now, and it's hard to take away any impression more dramatic that "S'alright!" For my money, the fighting didn't feel anywhere near tight or tactile enough, but we'll find out for sure when it lands at the end of May.
]]>Bethesda's is a crown with many likely jewels at present - Brink, Rage, Prey 2 and of course Skyrim are all mightily impressive prospects in their own distinctive rights at present. And then there's Hunted, whose gleam is a little harder to discern right now. A welcome break from the post-apocalypses which dominate Bethesda's shooter range, in broadest terms it's Diablo making the beast with two backs with Gears of War. An appealing concept - hackery and slashery up close and personal, with a strong co-op emphasis. My kind of thing, nominally.
]]>If you want to kill a minotaur then the best way seems to be to get a chum to help you electrocute it. I mean, that's common knowledge, but the Hunted trailer makes plenty of such things plain in its latest co-operative combat update. This new video features sardonic muscle dude and wry slender elf woman as they make weak quips and work in tandem to cause blood effects to happen. It's all rather jolly. High-five, handsome fantasy archetypes!
]]>It seems like only yesterday that I was posting a long video of Hunted: The Demon's Forge. Quite possibly because I was. But that video was old, and this is new! And as we all know, new is best. You hear that, grandad? Besides, while both videos show sexy protagonists E'lara and Caddoc slapping around whole bestiaries of monsters, this one's demon-strably more polished and marginally less all-over-the-place. But still quite all-over-the-place. You'll see.
]]>Eurogamer has the latest on hack'n'slash co-op goodtime Hunted: The Demon's Forge and its enigmatic Crucible mode, which, not unlike a restaurant serving griddled cat, has been spotted on the menu but not discussed.
Turns out Crucible is where you'll be spending all the gold picked up in the main campaign, using it to make your very own maps and share them with your friends. I'd expect a very basic interface, what with Hunted primarily being a release for the console machines, but it could be curious nonetheless.
]]>Death or unthinkable evil? That's apparently the choice that is open to the denizens of the world of Hunted: The Demon's Forge. Tricky one, eh? Just how bad can unthinkable evil be, really? Mmm, well, this latest footage gives us a taste of what's actually afoot in this action-slasher (Gauntlet rides again...) coming up next year, with wizened woods and shattered medieval cities. It's looking a lot like Tolkien tapping his foot to heavy metal, or something. Go take a look.
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