Nirvana - a new post-apoc CRPG project

[Brother None]

A (unspecified) German studio is working on a new post-apocalyptic project, entitled "Nirvana" and set for release in 2006.

The game prides itself on striving for non-linearity and more control for the player, which should be noticeable from the very get-go with their character creation, which gives you extensive option to pick what kind of player you want to be and a total of 8 character classes. Those character classes are: Researcher, Discoverer, Ex-Soldier, Merchant, Survival Expert, Cyborg and Nomad. Depending on what type of person you pick to play each situation can be solved differently. An example:<blockquote>"An NPC asks the Player to get an Item from a well guarded building for a reward.

Player 1: (the typical Egoshooter Player) handles it with the guns blazing.
Player 2: (the strategist) solves the assignment with his head.
Player 3: (the Sim-player) rounds up a few NPC`s to take over or persuades the guards to take over.
Player 4: (the RPG Player) picks whatever solution the character class he selected at the beginning of the game controls best.
Player 5: (the spontaneous type) ignores the task and explores the extensive game world, solves the task later or never.
Player 6: (the short-sighted type) kills the NPC to get both the reward and later the Item." </blockquote>The game wants to give the player total freedom and is compared to Diablo, in the sense that Diablo doesn't end when the game is over and you can keep going back to discover new things, progress further with your character and so on and so forth.

From what I can gather it looks to be a pretty non-linear project, but als one that lacks indepth gameplay and thus falls back to more of a dungeon crawler feel than a CRPG feel. However, these are only the first looks at a game that is at the beginning of its development, we'll see how it goes.

Thanks Nepsa and Blitzlord from the Silver Style Forums.

German links
Link: thread on German SSE forums
Link: article on gamigo about Nirvana
Link: Nirvana site on gamigo

English links:
Link: thread on English SSE forums
Link: article on gamigo about Nirvana (Babelfish translation)
Link: Nirvana site on gamigo (Babelfish translation)

 

[Frog]

Bah, all that non-linearity we have in fallouts. Nothing new to me.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

You know, with all those post-apoc games and mods that are or were in development, you'd expect the market to be literally flooded by them, yet somehow the last memorable CRPG with post-apoc theme was Fallout II. WTF?

 

[SimpleMinded]

You know, with all those post-apoc games and mods that are or were in development, you'd expect the market to be literally flooded by them, yet somehow the last memorable CRPG with post-apoc theme was Fallout II. WTF?

Well I know for me, I live in America so most of these products never reach our shores . I'm curious to the presence of these products in Europe. Or maybe its all just a new thing and in a year or two the market will be flooded .

And I found the comparison to Diablo funny... the game was strictly linear. And I'll believe the non-linearity of this game when i see it/ Most games talk it, but few implement it.

 

[APTYP]

Damn these germans and their post-apoc games. This is getting ridiculous. Do they have some sort of a fetish?

 

[Phil]

Hmm, not entirely. Most of these projects are first-time projects, meaning that a small startup tries to get either the attention of a producer, or that they try to 'make a game for the community'. Both ways, it's an 'unstable' enviroment, with a lot of projects that never make it to the first beta.

Say the startup gets noticed by a big producer. Little chance that a big producer is interested in selling a rpg in the fallout universe, so they force the development team to take another direction (so, in general, fuck it up). If your development team disagrees, there's little chance they will find another producer.

And the reason why we would expect to see the market flooded by lots of post apoc games, is because you're part of the fallout community, and you get notified of every project that even remotely resembles PA. For every post apoc project you see here, there are 100 other projects that we don't know (and don't care about). But there 100 other projects might just be a bit more interesting to producers for making profit.

 

[NCR_Ranger]

So, what [post-apoc] RPG are you guys looking forward to the most? For me, even though it’s not truly PA, it would have to be Metalheart: RR. For some reason I’m taking an interest in it and I've never taken an interest in any other PA game since the Fallouts. Anyone else here feel the same way?

 

[SumsoluS]

i dont look forward to anything in order to prevent let downs :p

 

[APTYP]

That's not what I was talking about. Absolute majority of post-nuclear apocalypse games comes from Europe these days, most of them from Germany and Eastern Europe.

 

[Ratty Sr.]

I'm looking forward to the Fall most, since it appears to be the only high-profile post-apoc RPG in development at the moment. It appears to have quite sophisticated gameplay, good graphics, a decent budget and highest chances of making it to the market and succeeding commercially.

 

[Phil]

That's not what I was talking about. Absolute majority of post-nuclear apocalypse games comes from Europe these days, most of them from Germany and Eastern Europe.

That's because I was replying to Ratty's post, not yours. But, my connection dropped, and it got posted when I came back online. Sorry for the confusing.

 

[Bobbin]

Damn these germans and their post-apoc games. This is getting ridiculous. Do they have some sort of a fetish?

Considering our current government here in Germany we are just preparing for the close future

However, I always felt that the biggest Fallout (and JA!) fans in the world live in Germany and the eastern countries. Don't know why, maybe because we have such a history in nuclear threats being the last outpost of the West for quite some time.