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GC 2004: A Hands-on Preview of The Fall
Silver Style Entertainment The Fall It's 21 years since a failed attempt to send Terraformers to Mars devastated the Earth's climate, resulting in horrific storms that leveled the cities and forever changed the face of the planet. Fierce winds whip burning gales across the parched earth and humanity fights to carve an existence out of the barren lands. Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world of ‘The Fall: Last Days of Gaia' from Berlin developer Silver Style Entertainment. At the recent German Games Convention in Leipzig, I met with PR Manager Julian Dasgupta to look The Fall as it nears completion for the German market. Starting Out The game opens with an introduction movie offering some background information. This movie will be available online in the near future according to Julian, so to keep the tension going, I'll not talk about the movie and just move on to the game itself. Most RPGs start with the creation of the main character but in The Fall this process is split into two parts. At the beginning of the game there is not much more to do than select the gender and appearance of the main character, by selecting from a range of images. Once that is done the game starts in the outskirts of a settlement and I got my first impression of the controls. In general, the right mouse button acts as an action button, which is something I had to get used to as most of the RPGs I play default to the left mouse button. Clicking somewhere moves the character to that location and clicking on a character initiates a conversation. The mouse cursor changes to reflect the various actions possible, such as a speech bubble for conversation with an NPC or an eye to investigate an object. The left mouse button is used in the menus and to select characters in the party, among other things. Another important control element is the camera, which can be zoomed out to an overhead birds-eye view or in tight, almost up to a third-person view using the mouse wheel. In addition, the camera can be rotated in a full circle with the arrow keys. Conversations, Characters and Parties The starting settlement turns out to be the headquarters of the "New Order", a group of people who are trying to make the best of things in the harsh environment of The Fall and talking to the president is the first order of business. Important NPCs are marked with a small triangle hovering above their heads, so it's easy to find the person you need. Dialogue occurs through a pop-up screen that shows the text and the choices that can be made during the conversation. I was told that in the final game, all dialogue would be spoken. There's no speech animation but characters do make gestures while speaking. During this conversation my character ended up in the president's army. The first thing that is needed as a new recruit is an ID card, without which it is not possible to proceed. This ID card or passport is also the second part of the character creation process. During this process it is possible to choose a date of birth, one of a variety of nationalities and the last known place the character lived in, however, these are background items and don't change the character in any way. What does influence the character is the choice of life experience and appearance. The appearance includes choices such as strong, beautiful, ugly, small and a few others and these choices directly affect the attributes of your character. Having great looks does wonders for your charisma, whereas having a strong appearance positively influences your strength. A smaller person is harder to hit and a big person can run a lot faster. The life experience of your character includes options such as criminal, survivor, fighter, medic and some others. This selection directly influences the skills of the character. A criminal will have excellent lock pick abilities, whereas a fighter has better weapon skills, for example. The list of skills is long and in addition to those mentioned above, examples include: light weapons, heavy weapons, sniper weapons, engineering, survival, driving (which makes it possible to drive vehicles) and medicine. In addition to the points awarded to the various stats and skills based on your choice of life experience and appearance, there are 10 stat points and 31 skill points available to distribute, although this may change as the game is further balanced.
While in the headquarters of the New Order I was also guided through the process of establishing a party. This party is needed for the first quest that was given to me by the New Order general. I was given several ID cards of possible party members, from which I could choose five. Just like the ID card of my own character, the attributes and skills of these potential party members were displayed, making it possible to compare them and make a balanced choice (or as balanced as I could at this early stage of the game). In total there will be 15 joinable NPCs in the game, but at this point only a small selection was available. Each of the NPCs has a background story and opens side quests that are only available when that NPC is in your party. The maximum party size is six members, including the main character. Selecting multiple party members is accomplished by dragging a box around them, similar to how this is done in other games. The behaviour of party members can be automated by selecting scripts for each of them. Using the scripts allows you to set certain default behaviours or alternatively this can be disabled and the player can control the party manually by issuing commands individually or as a group. Quests Most of the quests in the game can be solved in multiple ways, allowing the player to choose an approach that suits their character and providing a high re-playability of The Fall. There are no alignment issues in the game; although it is possible to take a good or evil approach to quests, this has no influence on the game itself with the moral relativism of a world where survival is paramount. In addition to the main plot quests, there are lots of side quests that are offered by the many NPCs in the game, along with the quests that are only available when the right member is in the team. Maps and the Inventory The Fall comes with a scalable map that can be dragged anywhere on the screen and it can be made partially transparent, so that it doesn't block too much of the view. Another map is the world map: instead of continuous movement through the entire gameworld, the player moves from zone to zone on a map that displays only the areas you know about, similar to Baldur's Gate. Talking to NPCs will reveal new locations, with the player free to travel to any zone that is known. The party member icons occupy the lower part of the screen and these can be used to select characters or to look at their stats or inventory. Each party member has its own inventory and it is possible to drag parts of an inventory from one party member to another, which is useful as the number of items in the inventory is limited. A key feature is the ability to combine items to create a new one. For example, a laser pointer can be combined with a weapon to make laser equipped weapon and a piece of wire can be used with some tools to create some chain armor. The possibilities with this feature are vast and should allow for some nice hand-made items.
Game World The Fall features a lively environment, which is packed with high level-textures, moving trees, walking and running animals and dynamic shadows injecting even more life. If your PC is not equipped to handle these great looking features, they can be disabled and the textures can be scaled down. Of course, the game does not look as good as it does with everything enabled. There is a day and night simulation and with one real-life hour spanning 24 game hours, you should not have to wait too long to see this attractive effect in action. All the NPCs in the game have a life of their own - they go about their daily routines and don't stand around waiting for someone to ask them a question. This can make it a bit harder at times to find them but it does add to the atmosphere and life of the game. I wish I could say something about the sound and the music in the The Fall, however, the neighbouring stand seemed to believe this Fair was all about proving who had the loudest music and could shout the hardest. The speakers on the table were maxed out, but it was next to impossible to hear anything. As a matter of fact, it took me 15 minutes to hear normally again after leaving the stand, thanks to the lovely neighbour. Combat The combat is real-time with a pause function. There is also an auto-pause facility available, which can be triggered by a variety of options such as being attacked, having low ammo or a party member being severely injured. The total list is a lot longer and applies to all the members in the party. Pressing and holding the right mouse button reveals a selection of tactical combat moves, such as lying down, kneeling or standing. When moving, the characters stay in these positions, which allows them to crawl around silently, for example. Once in combat, attacking is simply a matter of pointing and clicking. In general, a major part of combat in The Fall is issuing the different commands to your party members while the game is paused. During this time the position of the team members, the weapons they use and what actions they will perform are selected. Even though this sounds simple, planning the right strategy can be rather difficult. Splitting the party up into smaller groups and making the right groups can often be the difference between winning and loosing. An Add-on? If The Fall is successful the developers are planning an add-on, which will add a cooperative multiplayer option. As it is now, The Fall is a single player game. In addition, an editor will be supplied with the add-on allowing the creation of mods along with a graphical editor for creating the game world. The scripts that are required for the events, items and quests are all written in Python and require only a basic knowledge of scripting or programming to use and create them. Final Words The release date of The Fall is set for October in the German-speaking countries. There is no set date for an English release, because a publishing deal has yet to be finalised for the US and UK. Silver Style does not plan on releasing a demo, as the resources are required to complete and polish the game. The build I saw looked rather finished, which is a good thing with October not too far away. Like many party-based RPGs, playing The Fall takes some tactics and planning - not only during combat but also when building your character and party to make sure they are balanced with a combination of skills and abilities. I was able to spend around two hours playing the game, which gave me a good overview but I haven't seen the entire game by any means. From what I have seen, this RPG offers a lot of promise. I can only hope that The Fall is published in other countries without too much delay so I can play the game in English.
Average Reader Ratings: 10 (1 votes) |
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