henke on 26/5/2020 at 16:39
Noclip's new Arkane documentary has been 1-2 years in the works and it's got a loooot of good stuff in it. The first episode is mainly devoted to covering their 3 cancelled projects: The Crossing, LMNO, and Half-Life: Ravenholm. I'm gonna be honest and admit I'd never even heard of the last one.
[video=youtube;h4kdqwdbZZ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4kdqwdbZZ8[/video]
The Crossing and LMNO both look interesting, but after watching this I am seriously bummed Ravenholm never saw the light of day. It's like a more ImmSimmy Half-Life 2!
Pyrian on 26/5/2020 at 18:58
Dark Messiah: "Put spikes everywhere!" Lol. Explains a lot.
EDIT: Oh, I don't think I ever knew that Arkane made chunks of Bioshock 2.
Starker on 27/5/2020 at 00:44
"The Adventures of Sir Deathboot Kicksalot in the Land of the Conspicuously Placed Spike Racks"
That multiplayer game concept sounds a lot like what Evolve became -- pitting a powerful character against a team of weak ones. I wonder if anything from that project led to the making of or carried over to Deathloop.
You could probably do an entire game just centered around communicating with an alien and trying to solve puzzles requiring cooperation à la The Last Guardian.
Ravenholm sounds like it would have made a really cool VR game.
demagogue on 27/5/2020 at 03:52
Arkane: made some pretty cool games in the 2000s, then they recruited Digital Nightfall from TTLG and became one of the most innovative and beloved studios of the 2010s. That's all you need to know. :cool:
(Looks like a cool doc. I'll try to get around to it soon.)
Thirith on 27/5/2020 at 06:10
I'm looking forward to watching this, but I have to admit that I'm a bit wary of Noclip's videos getting longer and longer (by and large). I like their work, but especially with their videos on The Outer Worlds I got the impression that overall they could easily have been a third shorter without losing much in the way of substance. I like that they do documentaries about companies and games that they like, and that affection shines through without turning the documentaries into fluff PR pieces, but perhaps they're finding it more difficult to pare down their material exactly because they are quite fond of the subject matter.
Judith on 27/5/2020 at 07:08
Quote:
I like that they do documentaries about companies and games that they like, and that affection shines through without turning the documentaries into fluff PR pieces
I'd say that's not exactly true. They don't try to be journalists or documentalists in a real sense, they hardly ever ask difficult questions, and they don't control the narrative. The quality of their material depends a lot on what studios will give them, or whether they see a studio in interesting situation. And there are studios that exploited that, The Outer Worlds doc is basically a soft PR stuff that could end up as "making of" clip for a collector's edition. Obsidian was smart enough to take over the narrative and push it in their favor.
I know it's hard to be like Jason Schreier, but in their documentary about Creative Assembly Chris Bratt showed them exactly how hard interviews should look like. That was a superb journalist work. I haven't finished watching the Arkane doc yet, but I bet they didn't ask Raphael any difficult questions about his departure from Arkane.
The other thing I noticed is that Danny, as nice guy as he is, started to put himself in the spotlight more often, and saying pretty banal stuff on things he's about to show. That diminishes impact of the footage, and sometimes feels like just patronizing the viewer. Show don't tell, seriously.
The overall comparison that comes to my mind is from photography world, i.e. "Finding Vivian Maier" vs. BBCs "Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures?". First one is a drama movie about the guy who bought VM photos, dressed as documentary. Second one is a fantastic journalist work. Unfortunately noclip is heading towards the first example.
Thirith on 27/5/2020 at 07:45
For me it's still in "An Oral History of..." territory. We get an impression of what it was like for the teams. There's absolutely a place for this IMO, but it's very different from what Schreier has done over the last few years, and yes, I do think there's a risk that it turns into unintentional (?) PR. For me it's not quite there yet, but it brushes up against it.
Pyrian on 27/5/2020 at 08:23
Sure, he barely contributes to it, mostly just lobbing softballs when he's in it at all. The vast majority of the video is the devs talking and some gameplay video. I liked it anyway, though? It was interesting and it kept my attention.
Shadowcat on 28/5/2020 at 10:45
Arkane's "Prey" just appeared on GOG.