[Zaxx]

A daily reminder that saving will work just like it always did (you can save anywhere) so they didn't "program out" anything, they just tied saving to an inventory item.

And if you think that there won't be a cheat or an option for unlimited soul tethers then I don't know what to say.

[MusicallyInspired]

Is there even any real death then? Or is this like Prey where you always come back? If that's the case I have zero issue with this feature at all.

[Hank]

Zaxx, on 23 October 2019 - 05:19 AM, said:

A daily reminder that saving will work just like it always did (you can save anywhere) so they didn't "program out" anything, they just tied saving to an inventory item.

And if you think that there won't be a cheat or an option for unlimited soul tethers then I don't know what to say.

Someone punch me for not doing proper research, in the first place.

from Dario Argento's Gloves
Wrath uses Soul Tethers which are artifacts you can collect and then use to save, and Shrines which are locations in the maps you can visit and that act as stationary checkpoints.
Even though the IGN and Gamespot footage only showed a handful of them, the distribution of Soul Tethers is pretty generous and they can be found both on the main path and in more secret locations.
We know this is a controversial mechanic but we're fairly confident we can make it work.

reference
https://steamcommuni...85838072706249/

[Zaxx]

Also this when it comes to level design:

Quote

Will WRATH have RPG-like elements?
Mostly, no. However, we do take a slightly different approach to WRATH than it's spiritual predecessors.

First of all WRATH is not a completely linear game. Instead, you can approach each HUB and each level within, at your own will.

It has a certain element of metroidvania in that regard. The game is also relatively deep in terms of lore. If you choose so, you can pick up manuscripts, old maps, drawings, notes and diaries from the old world, to help you on your quest uncovering the mysteries and secrets that awaits you - Or you can choose to completely ignore this part of the game, and run-and-gun your way through. The choice is up to you!

[MusicallyInspired]

Wrath is in Early Access. Nice new trailer. Good to see more enemy types!

[Kristian Joensen]

I am seemingly unable to buy it on Steam.

[MusicallyInspired]

Haha yep it's unavailable for me too. I guess they jumped the gun a bit. Supposed to be today, though.

[Kristian Joensen]

I managed to buy it now, but for some weird reason the thing won't work in full screen!

[Sanek]

Kristian Joensen, on 22 November 2019 - 11:01 AM, said:

I managed to buy it now, but for some weird reason the thing won't work in full screen!

That's why it's called Early Access man.

[Kristian Joensen]

Sanek, on 22 November 2019 - 11:24 AM, said:

That's why it's called Early Access man.

Indeed!

It was actually an easy fix. I just had to select the fullscreen checkbox under the video setting menu.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah. Alt+Ent didn't work?

[Putrid Pete]

So after playing the game for 2 hours, here's a few thoughts on it:

• The game uses a similar style to System Shock 2/Bioshock with the usage of shrines. What it does different is that not only do they act as checkpoints but also regenerate your health fully the moment you use them. I don't know if you keep all your items after respawning in them since I am yet to die in the game. Thankfully, there aren't any respawning enemies like in SS/BS.
  
  
• The weapons feel good so far. I tested all five available in this stage of early access. They all have a secondary fire mode, but I need more time to get used to them and their alt fires before I can comment on how well implemented they are. I will say, however, that the shotgun feels beefy and powerful, so that makes me happy.
  
  
• I like the enemy design. They look cool, and killing them feels satisfying.
  
  
• The atmosphere feels right. It's a combination of horror, fantasy, wonder and the macabre. It isn't entirely nightmarish like Quake, but more undeadish and necromancey with an emphasis in tombs, crypts, graves... that sort of deal.
  
  
• Performance is OK, but it required some tweaking in the NVIDIA control panel to make it smooth and overall great.
  
  
• Mouse is somewhat off for me despite not having any mouse smoothing or acceleration enabled. It feels sluggish.
  
  
• The graphics are great, for a quake engine/darkplaces game. There are already many neat options to play around with for an Early Access game, but I'd like to see more options added in future updates. For instance, resolution support could definitely improve. You can have any resolution you want by messing around with cfg files, but some of these resolutions should be available in the in-game menu, such as 21:9.
  
  
• Melee enemies.... not really a fan. They can completely outrun you and their hitscan abilities ensure they can hit you even when you are not entirely in their range. This might be a matter of preference, I suppose, but something about a mob that I can't properly outrun or dodge makes me feel cheesed.
  
  
• Concerning soul tethers, I suspected that either there would be so many that you might as well have a regular save system, or so little that it would inconvenience the player. Well I think the former held true; there are so many soul tethers around that I always had them maxed out (and I'm playing on Hard, the highest difficulty level at the moment). However, there are only 2 levels available thus far, so maybe in the newer levels to be added in the future the difficulty will increase to the point where I would be forced to use them more. So far with shrines and so many soul tethers around, I only use a soul tether when I run across one that I can pick up and I'm at the item cap.
  
  
• Reload animations need work, particularly the shotgun's. You can't change weapons while the reload animation is taking place, and this can make it a problem to switch weapons on the fly. What's more, the shotgun reload animation takes a while to complete and it often makes me think it's done so I can switch, just to realize it's still going. This startled me a few times and made me commit more errors than I usually would otherwise. I think a good offset for this could be to cancel the reload animation to instantly switch to the weapon you want, and when switching back to the previous weapon the animation starts over again. Or something like that.
  
  
• Picking up items is a chore. The item pickup radius is low and you have to jerk about until the game decides to register the item pickup. Considering some of the items are quite small, you can miss them 2-3 times even when they are right in front of you.
  
  
• Ammo is abundant. I never felt like I was running short of anything. This is a double edged sword because it reduces frustration but it makes the game kind of easy, even on hard. Still, it was mostly on the fair side of things than on the easy side.
  
  
• The journal as it's implemented at the moment I can take it or leave it. It has potential, however. I'd like to see at least a paragraph of lore on locations and creatures, rather than just drawings and very basic information.
  
  
• Levels are large and open. The good side of this is that they are impressive to traverse and they can hold many enemies at once. The bad part of it is that there can be a lot of running around trying to find shit. To quote the AVGN, I would classify it as a "Where the fuck do I go?" kind of game. With the lack of any map in true Quake fashion, its easy to get lost. But at least the level design is not maze-like and you will eventually stumble upon wherever it is you need to go.
  
  
• The AI is not that good. It often gets stuck behind doorways, walls and other objects. Kind of hilarious to see this big, hulking monstrosity coming at you in full force to just stop dead on it's tracks because it hit a wall.

For now, those are my quick impressions. I'd say pretty solid for the first release of an Early Access game. Obviously it's still very rough around the edges, but its nowhere near DayZ or Ark levels of fuckery. There is a solid core in place to make this a great game with future polishing.

Edit: Just noticed that quicksaving is enabled. You can do so by pressing F2 to quicksave and F3 to load. Wonder if it was intentional to leave that in after going through the trouble of adding the soul tether system and shrines.

[Zaxx]

Not being able to cancel reload animations is pretty disappointing but after Ion Fury I'll just wait for the full version anyway.

Edit: Watched a bit of the dev stream though and I ADORE the idea that the level progression will be fully non-linear in the sense that you can play any level you want right from the start and that will make the ones you choose later more difficult. It's like a difficulty option on top of the difficulty options.

[Putrid Pete]

Zaxx, on 22 November 2019 - 08:36 PM, said:

Watched a bit of the dev stream though and I ADORE the idea that the level progression will be fully non-linear in the sense that you can play any level you want right from the start and that will make the ones you choose later more difficult.

Shit, now I'm gonna have to replay the game playing both levels in a different order just to try that.

[Zaxx]

Anyway here's a pretty thorough explanation of the soul tethers:
https://www.twitch.t...578?t=00h19m47s

So it's not super strict like in Daikatana, just something to keep in mind but there is not much chance to run out of them.

[Putrid Pete]

Currently you can carry up to 9 soul tethers with you. There were about 15 of them in the first level I played, and about the same amount on the second. I finished both in hard while only using soul tethers three or four times and shrines every time they were available (two in the first level and one in the other). Also, shrines are one use only, even the one on the main hub. I think that one should let you save as much as you want, since there are no enemies there.

As for the claim from the stream that Wrath is a 'hardcore' classic shooter, that will depend on how tough the missing levels are that will be added later on, and how the game's difficulty is adjusted in future updates. As it stands, limited save system or not, hard mode was a complete cakewalk for me. Ammo for every weapon was plentiful, and the shotgun is very overpowered, downing common foes in 1-2 hits, and tougher enemies in 3-5. It even has a significant spread that shreds everything in it's path. Never lacking ammo for it makes dispatching all enemies easy. Also, the alt fire mode of the nail gun-like weapon was very powerful for taking out strong enemies from a safe distance, but it did made me run out of ammo for it quickly.

Going from the journal in-game, it seems you need to collect 5 relics to finish the hub and (I'm guessing) face a boss. Not sure if there will be another hub after that, but I don't think so because both levels took me about an hour and a half to complete (and I didn't even look for secrets). So if there are 5 in total and assuming they are all about the same length as the ones available now, then that's about... 7.5 hours. Let's round it up to 8 for a possible final stage with a boss fight. 8 hours is usually the length of a classic shooter. I believe that the release version of the game could surprise us with levels turning out even larger than they were in Early Access, so maybe we are looking at 10 hours or so by then. But this is just speculation so we'll have to wait and see for that.

Overall I'm impressed with the solid foundation Wrath has laid out, and I'm confident the minor problems will be successfully ironed out. If so, the game is poised to be the Quake 1 sequel I always wanted and never got.

Edit: Reading the official Wrath wiki, I found out that the full release version will have 2 additional hubs, with 5 levels each! Yay! Thats a lot of content and quite the opportunity for difficulty to significantly increase!

[Zaxx]

Yeah, I'm sure they'll work out the kinks and that's why I don't want to play it yet. A lot of the things that bothered me about the preview of IF wouldn't have bothered me at all if I knew how the final game worked.

For example hearing that you can't cancel reload animations seems a bit bad but then I'm like "hey, maybe it's just because it's Quake". Because you know, in Quake you can't really cancel reload animations (or "firing state animations" as full on reload animations don't really exist there) and as the franchise went on that became part of the balance. So for example the rocket launcher finishes firing really fast so you can switch to the shotgun or the rail almost instantly after shooting a rocket, that gives you some extra damage to finish someone off or you can pop someone up into the air with a rocket and then hit them with a rail while they're airborne as an easy target. On the other other hand you can't switch to rockets instantly after firing a rail because a rail is a high reward - high risk shot where if you don't hit someone you lose a lot of damage so it's only fair that you become punishable for a few seconds.

So it's kinda like until we don't know how the full arsenal works we don't know shit really and can't really criticise stuff.

[Aristotle Gumball]

It's got a kind of Arcane Dimensions vibe with the hub leading into different maps. Really cool, though. I'm not even sure why I was so pessimistic before. The only thing I'd say is, it's kind of hard to die in this, even on harder difficulties. AD is much more difficult.

[Zaxx]

Yeah, on the stream they said that stuff like enemy placements and too much ammo and resources being on the maps are problems they know about and as new content is released that stuff will gradually fall into place too.

[Tea Monster]

Why are they asking people to give them money for 2 fucking levels of the game? WTF? LOL, this is yet another way they deviate from the "Hey, we're a 90's shooter, really.... honest!" script. I understand that it's early access, but just two levels is a wee bit on the Scroogish side methinks. Especially considering how the template of the 90's shooter is to issue the first episode, batch of levels for free as a demo. Sigh.

The zombies still look blah, but the other creatures look interesting.

[MusicallyInspired]

Civvie likes it. He said the first level took him an hour and the second level took him 30 minutes. He didn't seem bothered by the saving system either.

[Zaxx]

Tea Monster, on 27 November 2019 - 04:46 PM, said:

Why are they asking people to give them money for 2 fucking levels of the game? WTF? LOL, this is yet another way they deviate from the "Hey, we're a 90's shooter, really.... honest!" script.

And the lack of content wasn't a problem for Ion Fury's preview because... why? Sure, it's two maps but roughly the same playtime as in IF's preview.

[Tea Monster]

I didn't buy IF till it was properly out. No offence to anyone here. Again, no offence to anyone at Voidpoint, but I wouldn't pay anything above 5 bucks for 2 levels. Early access is sketchy anyway.

EDIT: I'm not saying it isn't a good game. I'm probably going to get it when it's got more than two levels of content.

[oasiz]

None taken.. The amount of time that it takes to create levels is very different.
Once you need to start making more advanced stuff with outdated tools, the time starts to increase by a huge amount.

Remember that Duke3D EP2/3 was rushed in like crazy, where something like fury took 4+ years to make. Preview campaign itself took about over a year.

A lot of games in the 90s had episodes that got crunched in a matter of weeks or few months.
It's easy to go for quantity and chop 1/3 off.
Shareware model doesn't apply these days.

[Mark]

One of the things that stops me from buying games these days is that I am picky about how much keyboard you have to use to play a game. The less, the better. Unfortunately I must be a very small minority because it is a rare thing indeed if a game review mentions anything about it. I got burned a couple of times paying full price for a game in the "brick and mortar store" (google it you youngsters) and installed the game, played for a hour and threw it aside because of so many key presses needed to play. I much prefer easing back in my chair and play by mouse only or maybe just mouse and 3 or 4 keys occasionally. I realize I have missed out on a ton of great games because of it but Oh Well...

[Aristotle Gumball]

Another small minority here: I basically only play oldschool FPS because I can listen to podcasts while playing (sorry sound designers) and feel like I'm having fun, but also "learning" at the same time. I don't have to think while I play, so I can just zone out. I don't enjoy anything with cutscenes or with strategy & planning because then it's like the game is demanding my full attention and I feel like I'm wasting time. Sidescrollers and racing games are OK too.

[Tea Monster]

Plus, there is a new Doom and - Mein Gott!!! - a new Half Life game. A man has to know his priorities.

[MusicallyInspired]

So an hour-long first level doesn't factor into anything for you? Just the fact that it's one level (even if it's long) means it's not worth as much as a few shorter levels?

[Radar]

I'll pick this one up when somebody mods back in quick saves.

[cybdmn]

Radar 100 Watts, on 28 November 2019 - 01:06 PM, said:

I'll pick this one up when somebody mods back in quick saves.

How often somebody will whine about that bullshit? There IS already a quicksave function in the game. F2 for quicksave, F3 for quickload. No fucking need to mod anything. #so, you have three different options to save, the shrines, which are kind of a checkpoint system, soul tethers and the F2/F3 quicksaves. What did you expect more? Buttons in the menu for the quicksaves?