I remember when They Hunger for the original Half Life came out and I couldn't wait to play a FPS game in which we got to fight zombies like in a Romero movies.
Now that's a mod I haven't heard of in a long time. They Hunger was awesome, especially when I was younger so it was actually scary. At this point because of how dated the gameplay of Half-Life is the AI is so predictable that nothing gives me the creeps anymore.
And yeah, post-apocalypse has never been a selling point on its own for me. It's always gone hand in hand with what the actual product is about, the meat on the bones. But at this point it is at a fantasy territory. Like, I want a world to expand and explore and build lore upon but instead there's just new iterations over and over again which means relearning a world and eventually it just starts to blend together. Doesn't help that we either get depressing eastern european or australian goofy leather clad bikers in terms of tone. It's predictable at this point. The reason why I still like Fallout is because Fallout 1 is allowed that early PA pass of being a fight for survival in a lot of places but in Fallout 2 they had started to rebuild the world in various ways and that's what I want to explore. Ideologies, cultures, religions, politics, discrimination, governments and whatever else that had the chance to sprout in an uncontrolled wild west. Sadly very few games does this and those that do aren't always successful.
I see the title for this thread and I just feel... Well, nothing really. Apathy. Why should I give a shit about 'yet another' PA game? A game that isn't even an RPG but instead an XCOM clone? Maybe it's the nostalgia in me talking but I want another Fallout Tactics-esque game but all I get are XCOM's. Art design is something a lot of developers need to get branded into their brains. I look at this and ask myself "In this compilation clip of content that i see, what stands out as different?" And I got nothing. It's truly generic. Minimalistic HUD with no charm to it. I don't like HUD's or UI's that are all about flare either as we get Wasteland's stupid fucking system with that but you need to find a balance to give your game some charm. This is... Sterile. Nothing in it pops. Nothing is willing to stand out and go "yeah, this is me, if you don't like it then piss off", everything is just so... Meh.
I think a big problem for me nowadays is that everything has gone over to being 3D so they just try to aim for the best graphics they can be able to do in order to reach photorealism as if that's enough. When you do 2D or cell-shaded you need to make damn sure that they "pop", that what is on the screen is interesting to look at. And while this game isn't the same in design and while I absolutely loathe its gameplay Darkest Dungeon is a game that nailed art design.
Now this? This got style. This got functionality (I'm looking at you, InXile...). This got charm and identity. This "pops".
Project Helios is not XCOM and never will be and I don't see why you would settle for eating crumbs in someone elses shadow and not even try to stand out. Even XCOM "pops".
Oh and completely unrelated but whatever, I started up WL2 again and while I am able to push through this part and enjoy the other aspects of the game, holy shit the UI is godawful and I hate it. Like, I'm starting to think that in order to be a AAA game (which Wasteland is trying to be) you need a shit UI designed for consoles. There are so many bad design decisions and wasted space and bad placement and size of boxes or text and layout that it flabbergasts me. We, collectively as a fanbase for RPG's should demand better. I'm not just talking about the character screen being divvied up into multiple tabs. No, there's far more stuff that is just stupid. I didn't remember this but in WL2 you can't see both of your weapons that you have equipped. You have to hit X and switch between them like in old Fallout, a design decision that truly is dated when other games have shown that you can have both items equipped on the screen at the same time.
So even if a game doesn't have a total lack of art design and knows how to make their game "pop" the functionality of it might be total dogshit or it might be "streamlined" (simplified) to the point that it can't have bad functionality because there's barely any "functions" to take into account.
All I got from this teaser is eastern european, winter, lots of cold and XCOM clone. I don't even like XCOM.
Hell, most of what I've written here is about the industry as a whole and Wasteland.
This game?
And it will probably be forgotten like all the other XCOM clones.
