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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 05:00:09 pm

Title: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 05:00:09 pm
A full third of Eurogamer's recent retrospective on FreeSpace 2 (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-12-retrospective-freespace-2-article?page=3) is devoted to Blue Planet.

Big leagues.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: BlackDove on December 12, 2010, 05:13:23 pm
Congrats on this by the way.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Kolgena on December 12, 2010, 05:15:09 pm
Ride this shiz and get ModDB Mod of the Year :D
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: The E on December 12, 2010, 05:21:20 pm
We already missed that chance. We didn't make it past round 1 of the contest.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: T-LoW on December 12, 2010, 05:22:04 pm
I read some of the comments... those childs barely know...

Maybe try to give an interview to them?
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Satellight on December 12, 2010, 05:22:22 pm
Ride this shiz and get ModDB Mod of the Year :D

They deserve it. Don't think there is many games improved in such a manner 10 (10 !!!) years after release

EDIT : But i know, the market law is ruthless  :sigh:
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: -Sara- on December 12, 2010, 06:30:37 pm
And now the whole initiate gaming community thinks BP is the third installment.  :lol: Grand!
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Kolgena on December 12, 2010, 08:04:39 pm
lol. Kind of unfair to the other mods, TBH.

Truth be told, a lot of the other good mods cover vignettes that aren't really big/good enough or thematically similar to feel like "FS3"s. BP is the closest mod to fit that role at all, even though the title shouldn't be accorded to anything. (Even then, I think there's too much pseudospiritual mumbo for it to feel as sterile as FS1/2 did)
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 08:11:35 pm
 :mad:

there is no pseudospiritual mumbo any more

But I agree that no single mod deserves the title, nor was BP ever intended as a stylistic, direct successor to FS2.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Kolgena on December 12, 2010, 09:15:31 pm
I feel like vishnans and shivans are going to be explained in a secular way, but you can't say that the feel of AoA was anything like the first to FSes, simply because you had all that mind jumping and premonitions and such.

Not that it's bad in any way.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Galemp on December 13, 2010, 01:42:04 am
BP is, stylistically, not my cup of tea, but I wholeheartedly applaud the dedication to immersion, story, background, tactics, and quality of the assets that have been invested into it. I'm an Old-School FreeSpacer. :)
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Nyctaeus on December 13, 2010, 05:54:35 am
Hmmm... I'm Old School player too so I don't like AoA so much. Too big springboard from the orginal Freespace, and it's too... colorful. When I was playing AoA, I was feeling like in somekind of cheap Japansee anime. Agree with Galemp in this way :).
I enjoyed WiH. Good mod with awesome quality of assets. I don't like only focusing on main hero. War is more important :). That's good to see unique charakters in mod, but they're definitny not the most important thing in campaign.

BP for me won't be a good FS3, but it's good interpretation of unique story. BP Team, please don't back to all mistakes from AoA and keep the WiH style in next parts of BP.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 07:07:39 am
BP is, stylistically, not my cup of tea, but I wholeheartedly applaud the dedication to immersion, story, background, tactics, and quality of the assets that have been invested into it. I'm an Old-School FreeSpacer. :)

Yeah, me too, I was a VBB member.

Our community is way too small for these artificial divides. I don't like the notion that Ransom, for instance, would not have been able to find an audience when he released Transcend because people had 'old school' bumper stickers.

That said, your kind words are very appreciated.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Black Wolf on December 13, 2010, 07:39:56 am
I don't think he means old school as in literally around for ages. I suspect (and correct me if I'm on the wrong track here Galemp) that he's more commenting on the fact that the whole notion of character driven, story-intense campaigns are a relatively recent innovation, and they depart quite significantly from what [V] did in FS1, FS2 and Silent Threat. Old School just, I suspect,means a preference for a style of play where the storyline plays out around the player, rather than happening to the player (or, more accurately, the player's character). I'm personally in the same boat - there were a couple of instances in AoA, and in what I've played of WiH (I know, I know, I need to finish it - I've not been able to access my FS computer for nearly 2 months now) where I as a player really disagreed with what my character was doing, and I felt very railroaded. Obviously, with a mute, faceless protagonist ala FS2, you don't get those moments. For me, primairly because of this, I couldn't accept BP as FS3 the way this review paints it (and I realize, that's just his opinion, - I know you guys aren't about to proclaim BP as FS3).
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 08:08:35 am
I'm totally okay with taste, perfectly fine with it - I don't need everybody to like everything! I just don't want people to stop playing certain things. Spoon, for instance, has been really worried that his uber-impressive megamod Wings of Dawn isn't getting enough play just because it's too much of a departure from FS.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Ypoknons on December 13, 2010, 08:13:08 am
I can't really say I have a preference really, and I'm a VBBer too, since slightly before the FS2 demo. Character-driven stories are OK with me, sometimes it's important to be forced inside someone else's head to see different views of the world. There's people out there who are perfect sane and rational (smart, even) but sometimes have completely opinions completely different from what I consider to be my well thought out and ordered logic. I like to explore that. Maybe not like. But you can learn from 'wtf did you do that for' really. After living on at least three continents and several countries, some people just have a different way of doing things...
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 08:16:57 am
I am 100% certain that V supports Blue Planet's storytelling approach - as well as the others.

Quote from: Jason Scott, Lead Writer on FS2
I love the fact that it's impossible to speak of the FreeSpace universe monolithically. The mythos expands with every story and mission that players create. Heterodoxy is a good thing.

And that's my feeling on the topic - more is better, experimentation is good, and there's a place for all styles.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Black Wolf on December 13, 2010, 08:25:34 am
I'd never advocate against playing BP, don't worry about that. :) It's an incredibly well made mod, and well worth the time, and I'm absolutely pumped to finish WiH in a few days when I finally get back home. I will admit to not having the same level of excitement for WoD - the anime style settings not my thing - but I'll get to it.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 08:28:58 am
I'm not big on anime either, but Wings of Dawn was just so much damn fun I had a blast with it anyway. The mission design is rocking and it really lets the player do a lot of interesting and varied things.

And honestly, I enjoyed the story and characters. Think of it as a Star Control tribute instead of anime if you prefer.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Spoon on December 13, 2010, 05:33:06 pm
First off, congrats with the review! :) (I would have posted before, but I was being leet for a day)

I will admit to not having the same level of excitement for WoD - the anime style settings not my thing - but I'll get to it.
:(
Way too many people are probably missing out on a lot of fun and awesome (if you don't believe me, believe battuta!) Simply because they go "hmm, anime themed? not my thing, pass." before hand.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 13, 2010, 06:01:57 pm
I'm totally okay with taste, perfectly fine with it - I don't need everybody to like everything! I just don't want people to stop playing certain things. Spoon, for instance, has been really worried that his uber-impressive megamod Wings of Dawn isn't getting enough play just because it's too much of a departure from FS.

I quit playing WoD because I kept getting my ass kicked on a particular mission. But I'll probably go back to it. After I'm done farting around on Xbox for a while.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Galemp on December 13, 2010, 07:03:44 pm
I suspect that he's more commenting on the fact that ... they depart quite significantly from what [V] did in FS1, FS2 and Silent Threat. Old School just, I suspect,means a preference for a style of play where the storyline plays out around the player, rather than happening to the player (or, more accurately, the player's character).

Indeed. Anyone who's played ST:R or Vasudan Imperium knows what flavor I like my FreeSpace. :D My point is that while I may not enjoy it as a FreeSpace campaign, the level of craftsmanship in every way makes it excellent in its own right.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: General Battuta on December 13, 2010, 07:22:03 pm
Thank you!

I like to think FreeSpace as a setting is robust enough to support a lot of different stories in a lot of different styles. I think BP's value is in part what the article points out - it gets to ask the questions that the core FS narrative style, by its nature, can't. AoA asked 'what if Alpha 1 had a past and had relationships?'; WiH asked 'how does Alpha 1 keep on going without going insane?'

The best interpretation of WiH I ever heard from a player was the idea that Laporte's schizophrenia was Alpha 1 - not Alpha 1 the character, but Alpha 1 the faceless and tireless ability to kill, the sort of gestalt warrior that we were in FreeSpace 2 and most of FreeSpace 1.

This doesn't make it better or worse, and I definitely recognize the value of the faceless style - like Jason Scott said in that interview, it lets you feel like a bug on a windshield. But I like to think of the styles as many angles on the setting.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: -Norbert- on December 14, 2010, 04:12:07 am
First off, congrats with the review! :) (I would have posted before, but I was being leet for a day)

I will admit to not having the same level of excitement for WoD - the anime style settings not my thing - but I'll get to it.
:(
Way too many people are probably missing out on a lot of fun and awesome (if you don't believe me, believe battuta!) Simply because they go "hmm, anime themed? not my thing, pass." before hand.
The problem is that many people don't know that the term "anime" as as generic as "movie" or "TV series". That can mean anything from tele tubbies equivalent to porn, from huckleberry fin equivalent to mass slaughter, from extremely deformed style to almost photo realistic drawing style...
The majority of anime that get over to Europe and the USA are part of a few genres within anime and because of that people assume that all anime has to be like that unfortunately.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: redsniper on December 15, 2010, 12:12:21 am
More people would play WoD if they knew about the CAS-9 (IMO)
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on December 15, 2010, 07:43:54 pm
Way too many people are probably missing out on a lot of fun and awesome (if you don't believe me, believe battuta!) Simply because they go "hmm, anime themed? not my thing, pass." before hand.

Actually, I was scared off by the fact that your mod made FS2_Open divide by zero and crash. No, seriously, that was exactly what the Apple report said, and I've never been able to replicate the crash.
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Spoon on December 16, 2010, 07:57:05 am
 :wtf:

I'm just going to write that off as an Apple thing  :P
Title: Re: Eurogamer Covers Blue Planet
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on December 16, 2010, 06:50:14 pm
Probably. :)

As it happens, I'm also bogged down by RL and about ten other FS-related things as well. Once I'm done with those, I might try playing through WoD again.