Indie RPG Takes Inspiration From PS1 Games

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Am I the only one who thought the music in that video was awful? Because it is.

Agreed. It was very jarring and not at all pleasant to listen to. It started to irritate me very quickly. There's just too much going on and sounds that don't fit overlapping, then dropping out, and overlapping again. And now my ears hurt. Awful.

Regardless, it looks like a game that could be very fun to play, and it seems to be doing a good job of playing off of nostalgia. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it. I only hope that the nostalgia factor isn't the sole thing that makes it interesting. Or it could get old quickly.

According to the page on Steam greenlight, it's just placeholder music that a friend loaned the dev while they work on the real score. Also, to answer this issue:

It's a PC RPG of the old-school style, we don't have enough of those. Problem is, we didn't see any combat.

Apparently that's also a work in progress, and they're not ready to show it yet. This is apparently an honest to god Alpha build, which means pretty much nothing but the engine works like it's supposed to. Indie devs have a weird habit of labeling clear betas (where the game is essentially complete, but needs polish and bug fixing) alphas, which makes cases where it really is an alpha look worse than they should.

Also, apparently the English version really is a translation, except it's from French, not Japanese. So the wonky dialog is a bug just like it was in FFVII, and not an intentional feature put in as an homage.

I specify FFVII because later games had better translations. Heck, the PC version of VII had a lot of the worst parts fixed.

 

[lancar]

It's an interesting concept, and while I'm looking forward to seeing what can come out of this, those animations look really weird in a high fidelity environment. I can forgive animations to appear stilted or overblown if the graphics match them, but here the graphics are too crisp, too clear and too high detail to overlook it. It treads right into the uncanny valley, so they'll need to adress this.

 

[RandV80]

Well shit... isnt that the definition of nostalgia? Seriously, the only reason I think that anyone would want this sort of camera is because of nostalgia. The visuals while nice arent that far ahead to justify the prerendered backgrounds.

A friend of mine once said that he liked swapping discs because it reminded him of the PS1 days. Sure, its nice to remember the "good old days" and shit but to consider a technical stepback a feature is just mental.

I remember playing games with prerendered backgrounds and most of the times I just wondered what was off screen. Indie devs seriously need to cutback on nostalgia focused games that only limit to copy whatever game was popular X years ago, we already had the avalanche of 2D platformers and now this... give it a few more years and we well have indie devs trying to copy Halo and selling it by saying "Remember when...".

You sort of have a point but I don't think it really applies here. Remember how large a game FFVII was? And how small FFX and other JRPG's became after? That's basically because full 3-D environments while nice are far more expensive and time consuming to develop. Same reason why you'll get far more dialog/story out of a game that's all text vs one that's voice acted.

Sometimes it can be a great idea to dust off old concepts and idea's and see what you can do with them today. Take the Project Eternity kickstarter for example, what little they've released for the game so far is starting to look gorgeous and because the camera is static they can use much cheaper 2d assets instead of developing pricey 3d ones.

 

[Doom972]

Since Square-Enix won't remake Final Fantasy VII, someone else eventually had to. Too early to tell if it's any good.

 

[Valok]

Am I the only one who thought the music in that video was awful? Because it is.

In the words of someone on the Face; "the music in the town sounds like someone is lagging hard while trying to stream". The music there at least needs some serious re-work, but at any rate, I'll definetly keep an eye on this one.

 

[CheesyGrin1992]

According to the page on Steam greenlight, it's just placeholder music that a friend loaned the dev while they work on the real score.

Ah, that's good to hear. It had me a little concerned, what with them taking huge inspiration and direction from the older Final Fantasy games. The background music could truly make or break the game. So it's good to know that what we hear here isn't a true indication. So I may very well have to keep a close eye on this game. It has me intrigued at least.

 

[Eric the Orange]

OK I can definitely see the PS1 era FF games in there but most other PS1 JRPGs that I can remember didn't really look like that.

Though I can understand why you may think so, as to a non-JRPG fan FF IS JRPGs. So you would associate what they do with the genre as a whole.

 

[SycoMantis91]

If this turns out half as good as games like FFIX, Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, etc. You can take all the money you want. I'd love to see a new Square Enix step up, but I'll definitely settle for a game or two if it's done right.

 

[Risingblade]

Needs better music and I didn't see what combat is like so this really isn't much to go on.

 

[antipunt]

Looks really interesting. I swear the second shot in the town is ripped straight from FF7 though.

Looks like the Sector seven slums, just to the right of Tifa's bar, except that police station should be a house.

[sub][sub][sub]Why do I remember that?[/sub][/sub][/sub]

>_>

<_<

*raises hand

You're not the only one

(oh god why)

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I miss prerendered backgrounds. In the PS1 days you could REALLY make some interesting, alien environments due to backgrounds being essentially drawn so you could cut down on costs.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

This looks quite interesting, I wonder what platforms this will be on beyond PC. I'd consider supporting it for sure, just need gameplay vids and perhaps some more details as to the game's length.

 

[rob_simple]

The characters look really flat and dull, but the pre-rendered backgrounds are nice.

I actually like the music, it fits in well with the dystopian atmosphere; you probably would feel like you were stuck in limbo, living in a world like that.

 

[anthony87]

Looks really interesting. I swear the second shot in the town is ripped straight from FF7 though.

Looks like the Sector seven slums, just to the right of Tifa's bar, except that police station should be a house.

[sub][sub][sub]Why do I remember that?[/sub][/sub][/sub]

Yep, that's totally what it is. Hopefully that was an intentional nod >.>

Hell even the text boxes look similar, this dude knew what he was doing.

OT: I'm damn interested from the concept alone.......and now I suddenly wanna go and play Dragon Quest VIII again.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I hope that its a game with a decent story, and not another nostalgia gimmick game like Evoland or Retro City Rampage.

 

[JarinArenos]

I hope that its a game with a decent story, and not another nostalgia gimmick game like Evoland or Retro City Rampage.

Or the literally-named "Nostalgia" on the DS.

I think it needs to take care not to just end up as "FF7 fan project", and to make sure it establishes its own image. Still, I'm intrigued.

Dear god, that running animation, though...

 

[piinyouri]

Looks rather nifty, but I just can't take super old school turned based combat like FF7 anymore.

Still, everything about that, even the way the camera slightly panned to the right upon entering the village is such an homage to FF7, so I may get it some point down the road.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Huge fan of the PS1 Final Fantasy's what with FF9 being my favorite game of all time. This looks great. Though that music has to be fixed. I would not be able to play this with music that off tone.

 

[ScruffyMcBalls]

I'm getting some vicious Pokemon Colosseum vibes off of this project. Also, really like where they're going with the musical direction, clean that shit up and I'd happily buy an OST disk, all in all I'm welcoming this with open arms, PS1 era RPGs are some of my favourite games (gotta love dem pre-rendered backgrounds).