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Rise of the Argonauts: Only mostly dead. (NSF56k)
Renzo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Liquid Entertainment
Publisher: Codemasters
Release Date: Fall '08
Platforms: X360, PS3, PC
Official Site: http://www.codemasters.com/argonauts
The Story: Rise of the Argonauts is a retelling of Jason and the Argonauts with a healthy dose of artistic license. On Jason's wedding day, his wife is killed by an assassin. After chasing down the murderer, Jason decides to search for the Golden Fleece and its life-giving powers. Jason sets sail on the Argo, and on his journey to revive his wife, travels to various locales and meets all sorts of characters from Greek mythology, including Hercules, Pan, and Achilles.
Why this game is Worth A Look©:
Liquid is getting rid of all the junk that takes you out of the game, keeping the focus solely on "playing a role" instead of "playing a spreadsheet".
- No numbers - No levels, no experience points, no hit points, no dice rolls.
- No inventory - Enemies don't drop weapons and gear, and thus there's no menu for you to manage. Each piece of gear you have equipped is shown on your body.
- No HUD - The HUD defaults to Off, and the game is intended to be played without one. Damage is displayed on character models. As Jason is damaged, he'll get cut and bleed. If you cut an enemy in half with a sword slash or behead him with a shield thrust, you'll see the enemy fall apart or lose his head. Notice the damage on the character models in the below screenshot.
Conversations: RoA takes a page from the Mass Effect book on conversation systems. You have a dialog wheel that vaguely describes your various conversation choices. Choose one and advance the conversation. Simple. The only difference is that 4 gods are watching you, and your dialog choices affect your standing with them. More on that later.
The Argo: Remember how awesome the Ebon Hawk was in Knights of the Old Republic? The Argo is at least a little more awesome. The Argo will house all your party members and other characters you recruit during your journey in their own personal rooms, and will also serve as an armory, complete with displays for all your acquired gear. Below is Daedalus the blacksmith, who befriends Jason and moves onto the Argo to join his cause.
Gear: You don't just get Sword, Sword of Awesome, and Sword of More Awesome. Every piece of gear you obtain has some kind of story and unique significance in battle. For example: Spears are used to fight from a comfortable distance, like the Spartans in 300 or Brad Pitt's Achilles from Troy. Your standard spear may just be a thrusting weapon, but one of your new spears may allow you to pierce armor or be suitable for throwing. It depends on the spear, and you can't have all of them equipped at one time. Below you see all of Jason's gear (Sword, Spear, Mace, Shield) on him at once. You can see this in just about every other screenshot, but look at that hit. Jason's swinging for the fences.
Party: You can bring two party members at a time. In line with the No HUD promise, there's no interface for controlling your AI companions. Your party members act on their own, and they're all supposed to help you in their own way. Hercules will bear-hug bad guys to set them up for an easy kill.
Quick Combat: You won't have to stab a guy 20 times to kill him. It's very likely that your first successful hit on an enemy will do the job. Every successful hit is lethal or maiming.
Character Advancement: Character advancement is tied to 4 watchful gods: Hermes, Artemis, Ares, and Apollo. In conversations, each of your 4 conversation options is tied to one of those gods, and in battle, each of your 4 weapons (Sword, Spear, Mace and Shield) is tied to a god as well. As you talk to people, kill enemies or bosses, or complete quests, you will build up feats and accomplishments. As you devote your accomplishments to a god, you gain favor and are blessed with abilities. Ares bolsters your ability with the Mace, whereas Apollo lets you use the Shield both more defensively and offensively.
Videos:
Story
No numbers, inventory, menus, HUD, etc. Lots of combat footage too.
The Argo
Comments:
I'm looking forward to it. I think Liquid is heading in the right direction, and the videos seem to show that they're delivering on their promises. The only misgivings I have are that Liquid haven't made a game like this before, and some of the voice acting sounds poor.
Other than that, bring on Fall 2008, whenever that is. Discuss!
Renzo on
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Posts
Now I'm probably going to spend EVEN MORE MONEY this fall
I am intrigued however. Cautiously intrigued.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I also wonder just how much liberty is going to be taken with the story. I mean, like a lot of Greek heroes, Jason was a pretty vile fellow overall.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
They did a big ol' story about it in Game Informer over a year ago now. The game has been in the news for awhile, it's just been buried by all the other high profile titles that have seen releases recently.
That's why I made this thread. A lot of videos and media have been released on RotA in the past several months, but nobody was talking about it because higher profile games are taking the limelight.
Here's another nice tidbit. The soundtrack is done by Tyler Bates, the same guy who composed the soundtrack for 300. He's also working on the Watchmen score.
I don't know about you, but I for one liked Desperate Housewives: The Game.
Anyway, going to have to agree with everyone else in saying that it sounds too good to be true, and was it just me, or did those clips of combat look kind of clunky to anyone else?
Sir, I present evidence to the contrary
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
Whoops, too late.
This looks really, really cool.
Man, that brings back memories. I absolutely loved Battle Realms. And the D&D RTS was pretty dang fun too. Desperate housewives? Ya...well...it had to be aimed at a casual audience. Like, haven't touched a computer before casual.
But I love Ed's description of the "menu game". This sounds like a great step forward. That is one of the things I didn't like about Too Human's demo, the menu was just really clunky and awkward.
Or have the user really wanting to be able to tell an AI companion to stop fucking things up, being a boring progression of combat with no immediate feel, and confusing to play.
Like I love the idea, but if "NO MENUS!" means instead we have a really clunky and stupid to use interface that is worse than a menu then fuck that shit.
I'm hoping it's awesome.
Who wants to buy a kidney?
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/riseoftheargonauts/news.html?sid=6195436
Unless the party AI is something special, this is going to be horrible. I know my party members in mass effect at least were of the pants-on-head retarded variety most of the time. Oh sure, they could use abilities sensibly... ish, but never seemed to catch on the the whole "bullets are bad" philosophy of actually taking cover behind anything. Or going where I tell them when its a few feet in front of them with nothing blocking the way.
Colour me interested, but sceptical.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
well the developer intentionally wanting you to hate half your party is something new. Not, we made ur whole party a bunch of suicidal emo freak retards, so now u hate them kinda thing.
It really sounds like everything one could want from an action rpg.
For me, it doesn't lend to immersion when I lack control, lack clear knowledge of what's going on. It frustrates me and pulls me more out of the game.
I understand that they're making certain changes to compensate, like the character model damage, but I don't buy that it's going to actually work, especially in a 3D environment. In one part of the video they showed Jason turning into molten lava, for instance--how can you tell how damaged you are then? And how about this--what if you've got a massive gash on your chest? That damage information is not exactly readily available from behind your character.
And to me, this attempt to get rid of the interface is the only thing about this game that looks special or unique so far.
When you're taking a minimalistic approach to anything, you try to reduce it to its barest essentials, simplify it--you don't intentionally obscure things. That's not minimalism, that's just a big dose of stupid.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38324.html
It's a really neat idea. Your class (ie - what God you have favour with) will actually push the story in a specific direction because how you change the story is directly related to how you "level up" towards a specific class. So a follower of Ares won't just get Ares powers, he'll ACT more like a follower of Ares. I think that's a really cool thing to enhance the role-playing in the game.
I'm going to assume his animation of running/walking will change too ala Resident Evil. I didn't need a health gauge to know Leon was fucked up and almost dead, him holding his side and limping told me. I'm not worried.
More then fine, since that game was FUCKING AWESOME.
Yeah, I don't need to know I've got 56 health instead of 58, that's just pedantry. If I can see that I am hurt bad, then I will know to go sort myself out. If I can see that I am not hurt bad, then I can continue.
Mass Effect's partners were mostly retarded, but it didn't bother me that much. I set them to auto-everything and forgot about them.
That's where I disagree, knowing the degree of your injuries at a glance is everything, especially in any kind of RPG. The difference between 56/300 and 58/300 health might be negligible, but what about the difference between 10/300 and 56/300? I think it's safe to assume that it'll be hard or impossible to tell the difference in such cases, but it could indeed mean the difference between life and death.
Also, I just don't like the idea of having to decipher your health level. When it comes to critical information, just tell me, because I need to know.
You are alerted when you're in critical condition by a red haze on the edges of the screen. Sit back and avoid damage and you'll heal automatically. Exactly like Halo.
Also you can turn on a HUD if you really want it.
Quoting, because i'm not entirely sure that everyone in this thread is fully aware of just how incredible (and underappreciated) this little gem was.
Plus, just like Rise of the Argonauts, this was a game that burst out of nowhere and smashed the bloated conventions of a stagnant genre (RTS).
I'm seeing parallels here, people!
Shame no-one played it, but whatever.
This post confuses me. Do you have a phobia or deep seated hatred of Greek mythology which means you won't be touching the game? That seems to be what you're implying but if so...why?
White FC: 0819 3350 1787