Actually, that info’s being held back at the moment to roll out as part of a big story about how our character advancement works. Good questions though! You should know more soon 
Same is true for more info about how abilities like interrogation work…
Well, ETQW looked really strange with all those huge explosions, scary aliens making FOOD(stroyent was more like universal life sustaining resource but what the hell) and SPARE PARTS of humans and alien engineer(actually former human) having his skull RIPPED OPEN and brain completely EXPOSED, yet without a single trace of blood, not even mentioning any gore.
Im just afraid that same issue will arise in Brink, since SD art personnel has clearly shown its capacity for quite detailed gritty settings and characters… 
I assume SD or their publisher was aiming for a Rated ‘T’ indeed. A bit of a shame as it definitely didn’t do justice to the theme of cyborg zombies coming to harvest humanity.
I know I’m just being an arm chair producer here, but I would seriously look at how my target audience matched the rating I wanted for my game.
And even then, I don’t really care, in the Netherlands we don’t give a damn about ratings, my six year old nephew could go out and buy ETQW if he wanted to.
And in the end game turned out to bee too complex for such audiences, and lack of prolonged tutorial or at least narrator didn`t help.
Shame, really, I hope SD learned this lesson.
Kinda makes you feel nostalgic about DooM times, when the more blood developer put in game, the better it was, and nobody felt afraid of walls of text in readme. 
It’s ridiculous! My younger brother wasn’t allowed to see Troy (TROY of all movie? Why? Only because of Brad Pitt’s naked ass?) because he couldn’t identify himself. It’s just weird.
The theme of the game is actually a fairly important factor for me personally. You’ve got to remember, the fact that a civil war has broken out on the Ark is literally a tragedy… blue & grey, brother fighting brother type stuff. It’s also bitterly ironic, considering the lofty, high minded ideals Ark was founded on. It’s in no one’s best interest to be killing each other, and both sides of the conflict have only taken up arms because they feel they have no other choice.
The themes present in the narrative of the game are all about how they do have a choice, and they have to look beyond their personal point of view if they really want to solve the problems they all face as a shared community.
Sorry, started going off on a bit of a theme rant there :o Anyway, I just meant to say that considering the setting of the game and the origins of the violence, it doesn’t necessarily fit the theme of the game to have lots of really overt gore for the ‘fun of it’. The leader of the resistance was actually originally a medic; the leader of the security faction is an engineer. Neither of them are born soldiers. Neither of them want the bloodshed to continue or to wade in the entrails of their enemies.
Oops, I’m starting it again. Anyway, we’ll see how it works out…
p.s. The most important thing, though, is of course to make a game that’s tons of fun to play. :stroggbanana:
If memory serves right, in Troy one man gets tied to charriot and then drawn on the loooong road; I doubt this is appropriate for young fellas.
By the by, which rating Lord of the Rings had? There were bloody battles and decapitations for sure.
[quote=Rahdo;195889]Oops, I’m starting it again. Anyway, we’ll see how it works out…
p.s. The most important thing, though, is of course to make a game that’s tons of fun to play. :stroggbanana:[/quote]
Nice touch with the medic/engie, looking forward to the story. I like that I still pick up new bits of info while play L4D.
I think the calls for blood/gore though is more a scale of expectation, art direction?
On one side: A-Team - Stupidly no gore, blood and an “uncanny valley” effect as a result (ETQW kinda felt this way at times)
On the other: Saving Private Ryan - Dramatic realism (and probably ill fitting with Brink)
For me, a happy middle ground. Some blood, because people bleed when shot and some nice ragdoll type reaction. Gibs would be nice for when you make an incapacitated person a dead one.
Call of duty 4 had a decent balance of violence. Just a small burst of blood.
gibs from gibbing yes, ragdoll and blood no, I’ve seen enough real blood to last me a couple lifetimes
afaik, A-Team never actually killed anyone, they always surrendered even after having car/truck/building blown to pieces, they only “killed” inanimate objects
[QUOTE=Rahdo;195889]Sorry, started going off on a bit of a theme rant there :o Anyway, I just meant to say that considering the setting of the game and the origins of the violence, it doesn’t necessarily fit the theme of the game to have lots of really overt gore for the ‘fun of it’. The leader of the resistance was actually originally a medic; the leader of the security faction is an engineer. Neither of them are born soldiers. Neither of them want the bloodshed to continue or to wade in the entrails of their enemies.
Oops, I’m starting it again. Anyway, we’ll see how it works out…
p.s. The most important thing, though, is of course to make a game that’s tons of fun to play. :stroggbanana:[/QUOTE]
Well I definitely think gore should fit the theme. Over the top gore like in TF2 or UT3 clearly doesn’t match the game. But absolutely no blood at all equally detracts from the ‘tragedy’ theme. If you want tragic gore, look at Raven Shield, small patterns of blood on the wall in the direction the bullet went trough the boody, puddles of blood slowly gathering underneath a fallen body etc, no need for gibs at all.
And yes, the overall story line is very interesting indeed. The Ark basically represents the entire earth on a small scale in the scenario that large parts become inhabitable.
That was a dead corpse and was one of the rare points the movie stayed true to the old texts.
[QUOTE=Rahdo;195866]Actually, that info’s being held back at the moment to roll out as part of a big story about how our character advancement works. Good questions though! You should know more soon
Same is true for more info about how abilities like interrogation work…[/QUOTE]Nice I’m looking forward to it!
[quote=Nail;195911]gibs from gibbing yes, ragdoll and blood no, I’ve seen enough real blood to last me a couple lifetimes
afaik, A-Team never actually killed anyone, they always surrendered even after having car/truck/building blown to pieces, they only “killed” inanimate objects[/quote]
Fair enough, I think we can all agree we’ll have different ideas of appropriateness of it. It is of course easier to include, then optionally switch it off or reduce (satisfying many) than not have it all all and have people feel the game is lacking.
A-Team. Entirely my point, everyone remembers how ridiculous the show was in this regard.
I think the phrase I’m looking for is “Conspicuous by its absence”.
[QUOTE=Rahdo;195889]The theme of the game is actually a fairly important factor for me personally. You’ve got to remember, the fact that a civil war has broken out on the Ark is literally a tragedy… blue & grey, brother fighting brother type stuff. It’s also bitterly ironic, considering the lofty, high minded ideals Ark was founded on. It’s in no one’s best interest to be killing each other, and both sides of the conflict have only taken up arms because they feel they have no other choice.
The themes present in the narrative of the game are all about how they do have a choice, and they have to look beyond their personal point of view if they really want to solve the problems they all face as a shared community.
Sorry, started going off on a bit of a theme rant there :o[/quote]
I wanna rant too!
I’ve had mixed feelings about the theme/narrative stuff you’ve been talking about so far.
First, the negative: I hate cutscenes. I’m wary of this cutscenes during maploads idea.
Imagine that when your map loads, a disembodied voice says “Your gameplay is important and may be recorded for training purposes. You are in a queue. Please wait until one of our operatives are available to help you. Your gameplay is important and may be recorded…” etc. This is what cutscenes are like to me.
Skip/turn off/mute buttons, please. If I am to be forced to watch something during mapload (other than a progress bar), tactical information is about the only thing that doesn’t grate on the nerves.
Positives: I really like the way you’ve been talking about the use of juxtaposition. It’s the old writing adage - show, don’t tell.
There was a map I was making for ETQW, that I probably won’t get a chance to finish because other life-stuff™ has come up.
The story was that the humans wanted to pull the Strogg fleet away from the Applied Phlebtonium Atmospheric EMP Voodoo Machine in New Zealand, and so decided to broadcast everything they’ve discovered about the Strogg as loudly and for as long as they possibly could into space using the Arecibo Observatory.
The Strogg would need to assault the facility from the North, break through the frontline defence, build a short-range slipgate, and then destroy the actual transmitting equipment aboard the cradle.
Through the map, you’d see stuff like the Angel Ramos visitor centre with battle-damage, burning and smoking, but still with “OBSERVATARIO DE ARECIBO” written on the side.
I was never going to beat people about the face with a 20-minute long codec conversation, but people who knew a little history would realise that the telescope was built around the time that humans were quite eagerly looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence, and was first opened by firing off a message into space towards any aliens who might be listening.
This time the humans would be using the facility in the same way, but for entirely different reasons and in a vastly different situation. At the same time, the visuals of all that stuff built during a much more innocent and hopeful period was a pretty good juxtaposition, I thought. lol games r art etc
I remember something Locki (I think?) said, which was that a cool idea is a cool idea, but is useless without the effort put into making it work. I consider theme to be very similar, in that it’s the kind of thing that can make a great game transcendent, but is utterly, utterly worthless without the actual game there to work off.
On topic ragdoll stuff:
There’s nothing quite as useful for immersion as seeing your enemies blown halfway through a solid wall, or with their own leg sticking out of their chest.
I have an idea, though. From the current description of SMART, it seems likely that the character models have a load of IK going on, right?
If that’s the case, why not add a little ragdoll to living players? Make character models recoil slightly from hits, to act as another visual hit feedback. With a little pervasive ragdoll everywhere, you really don’t need ridiculous helium-corpses screwing up revives.
Note: I am not talking about kickback from taking hits like in Quake Live, that stuff can go die in a fire.
This is planned, and personally, I’ll be considering ritualistic suicide if we somehow can’t include it.
…20-minute long codec conversation…
NEVER.
[QUOTE=Exedore;196012]This is planned, and personally, I’ll be considering ritualistic suicide if we somehow can’t include it.
NEVER.[/QUOTE]
<3 Marry me.
In my opinion the game doesn’t need blood or extreme gore but ragdolls have always been a nice feature in games like CS:S, even though after a while I disabled them because I’m an FPS junky
Don’t insult badman please
