Arx Fatalis: E3 impressions

Fafhrd on 19/5/2001 at 02:12

Allow me to open with: pretty damn cool, it's obvious that this game is in the same vein as Underworld I & II, but that's not a bad thing, as we all know. The cursor which can be seen in some of the screenshots that we've all seen (would've had some myself, but I didn't have a digital camera) is toggled with the second mouse button, holding the button down puts you in mouse look, releasing makes the cursor visible, and enables you to select things like spellcasting mode, and inventory. The gesture recognition magic system worked pretty well, you get the runes by finding them laying around, and then you can use them for the gesture, so waving the cursor around randomly in spellcasting mode won't give you a rune you don't have. There wasn't any spoken dialogue yet, because FGE is translating and recording the english dialogue for the game, but there were some text conversations. One of the more interesting things I was shown had to do with a conversation, two goblin guards are talking, the main one complaining "If Zuk leaves a dirty plate on the table, I'm going to punch Zuk's lights out," etc., complaining about Zuk, so he took the player character to find Zuk, who was guarding some other prisoner, on the table in that room was a dirty plate, so he grabbed the plate, went back to the other, and placed it on the table, upon seeing this, the guard captain walks out to find Zuk and punch out his lights. Combat is handled the same way as it was in Underworld, you arm a weapon, and the power meter crystal appears in the center of the hud, holding down the attack button charges the blow, and releasing attacks. You can kill all sorts of things and loot their bodies, killing a chicken, for example, will yield two raw drumsticks, if you find a fire, you can cook them to eat them. You can also find flour, mix it and make bread, you can even add an apple to the bread dough and make an apple pie. I was told that it's possible to sell items that you make in this manner.
The engine was nice, there was some pop-up, but it was a pre-alpha build, and that's to be expected. There was some pixelation of the textures, but I was told that it might have been the Geforce3 card it was running on, since it was the first time they'd had access to a GF3, and the engine wasn't optimised for it. The estimated stateside release date was Q1 2002, but that's extremely tentative because they want as much time to tweak it as possible, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were pushed to Q3 or 4. In closing, this is gonna be a kick-ass game, and thanks to Raf, or whoever it was that showed me the game, (I didn't catch a sight of the badge, so I'm not sure quite sure who it was) for showing me the game.

Brad Schoonmaker on 19/5/2001 at 03:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Fafhrd:
The cursor which can be seen in some of the screenshots that we've all seen (would've had some myself, but I didn't have a digital camera) is toggled with the second mouse button, holding the button down puts you in mouse look, releasing makes the cursor visible, and enables you to select things like spellcasting mode, and inventory. The gesture recognition magic system worked pretty well, you get the runes by finding them laying around, and then you can use them for the gesture, so waving the cursor around randomly in spellcasting mode won't give you a rune you don't have.

<IMG SRC="thumb.gif" border="0"> COOL!! I was really hoping for this distinction between 'USE' and 'PLAY' modes as was done similarly in SS2 perfectly. The spellcasting sounds exactly right for my tastes as well! <IMG SRC="thumb.gif" border="0"> :D

Quote:

Originally posted by Fafhrd:
Combat is handled the same way as it was in Underworld, you arm a weapon, and the power meter crystal appears in the center of the hud, holding down the attack button charges the blow, and releasing attacks. You can kill all sorts of things and loot their bodies, killing a chicken, for example, will yield two raw drumsticks, if you find a fire, you can cook them to eat them. You can also find flour, mix it and make bread, you can even add an apple to the bread dough and make an apple pie. I was told that it's possible to sell items that you make in this manner.

Again, sounds just right for me.
<IMG SRC="thumb.gif" border="0">

Thanks for the report, Fafhrd. Great job! :)

Brad S.

spirix1 on 19/5/2001 at 10:26

Wow, that's sound really cool. It's all right if you didn't get any shots at the E3. It's still good to hear about it after waiting up for it for quite some time. It's also great to hear what's happening with the ARX over at E3.

Great work!

Shadowcat on 20/5/2001 at 15:41

I'll just add that RPGDot has posted some comments about Arx in their <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/e3_day3.shtml">E3 Day 3</a> summary.

I'll also add my disappointment that this is about the only report on Arx I've seen in the media thus far (been keeping my eye on Blue's News), but hopefully there'll be some post-show reports.

spirix1 on 21/5/2001 at 01:39

hey, good job.
Kinda short article from RPGdot though,
Well, at least the "secret new multiplayer style" has been blown. maybe just quarter of it, hope theres more up their sleeves.

Keep it up!

Le Magot d'Oz on 21/5/2001 at 16:46

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadowcat:
I'll also add my disappointment that this is about the only report on Arx I've seen in the media thus far (been keeping my eye on Blue's News), but hopefully there'll be some post-show reports.

I've several but not very interesting anyway ... and the most interesting report can be found on (http://www.gameplex.ch/index.asp) http://www.gameplex.ch/index.asp (already linked in the TTLG news)

Le Magot d'Oz on 22/5/2001 at 13:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Fafhrd:
In closing, this is gonna be a kick-ass game, and thanks to Raf, or whoever it was that showed me the game, (I didn't catch a sight of the badge, so I'm not sure quite sure who it was) for showing me the game.

You can check who it was in the corporate section of (http://www.arkane-studios.com) Arkane Studios ! :D

Quote:

Originally posted by Fafhrd:
The estimated stateside release date was Q1 2002, but that's extremely tentative because they want as much time to tweak it as possible, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were pushed to Q3 or 4.

Do you mean Q3 2001 ? I don't think so : marketing contraints have to be considered (they've already announced a realeased at Q3 2000 ... :rolleyes: so Q1 2002 -or Q2 at worst- would probably be more realistic...)

raf on 22/5/2001 at 16:20

Thanks for your first impression Fafhrd, and yes, it was me :-D