Topic: The Descent Series should rise again!

[TechPro]

For many of us, Descent has helped define (or re-defined) our gaming experience and what we wanted from a game.  Those of us who have been around long enough have deeply rooted and (usually) fond memories of times gone by exploring the mines of Descent and multiplayer gaming.   Yes, over the years, the Descent series has aged and not always gracefully.  The community of Descent players is still relatively strong despite the many years and is surprisingly faithfully devout (which speaks well of the Descent series).  Oh, there are those will still frequent the Descent community even though they may rarely if at all still play the game (and wonder who still plays it) but it is clear there are many (including myself) who still actively play, and have shared the game with their offspring (who typically become immediate Descent fans).   As the Descent series has aged, it has been helped along by projects such as DXX-Rebirth and D2X-XL.

As many of us have learned, Steam has recently begun offering (for Windows platform) Descent, Descent 2, Descent 3, and even Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War.  With recent advances in technology, there has been a "revival" of sorts for the space sim genre, combine that with advances in displays, 3D, and VR technology, games have become much more immersive and there surely is more to come.

Thus the time has come for me to lift my voice along with Chris Watters (a GameSpot blogger) and others to say "The Descent Series should rise again!"

This post inspired by Chris Watter's GameSpot posting on May 21, 2014: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-descent-series-should-rise-again/1100-6419795/

[Foil]

Hear, hear!

[Kaiaatzl]

Rise again, rise up!  The Descent, within its depths, has languished in its slumber for far too long!  It is long past time for a new awakening!  Soulless souls of dread eldritch gods hear me, the time of Descent has come again!  Nn'eri, nep-hilim, k'wod, k'luh!  Ynori!  Rise up and consume -- consume the world!  It is the time of a new Descent!  WAKEY WAAAKEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

BWWWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAANYYYAAAANYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa

[Sapphirus]

Rise up and consume -- consume the world!  It is the time of a new Descent!  WAKEY WAAAKEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!!

You're not Unicron
Okay, before you complain about my obsession of Transformers, here's the reason, I can't help it.

[Kaiaatzl]

I'm not complaining.  Why do you think I would be complaining?  I'm a master in the art of not minding things I don't mind.
Even though I was going for more of a cthulhu mythos vibe, I'm honestly glad somebody decided to interpret it to suit their own agenda and then play along because I thought you guys would just call me crazy (though to be fair, I'd have liked that too).  I read The Shadow Over Innsmouth a few days ago and that ending tends to stick in your head!

[Scyphi]

Now that's flattering, seeing Descent get praise like that on a gaming site as major as Gamespot. And of course, I have to agree. Descent making a comeback on the gaming market? Now would be the time.

Seriously, interest in Descent seems to be getting more and more renewed as the months go by. It's gradual, but it's growing, and starting to take notice.

Interplay (which I think we can safely say by now are the sole retainers of the franchise's rights now) would be stupid not to exploit that. Which says oodles about Interplay, but that's another story.

Speaking of Descent, anybody know the EXACT date D1 was first released on ANY market? I ask because I was looking it up myself, but have been getting conflicting dates; some say sometime in 1995, some say in 1994. If the latter, then it occurred to me that Descent may already have hit the big 2-0, or may be as few as mere months to weeks away. If the former, then I still want to know the exact date so I can plan ahead for any celebrating I might want to do. 

[Kaiaatzl]

I have some speculation with some actual foundation about what exactly Interplay was hoping to achieve by putting the Descent series on Steam.  Unfortunately I can't say anything about it right now.
And besides, only having some foundation to your speculation isn't the same thing as being right.  Even when it turns out I'm right, the thoughts I'm having now will still have been speculation from the viewpoint of my self at some point in the probably-near future.  Why am I explaining to tasty earthlings?

[-<WillyP>-]

It's a movie trope... All villains explain the entire plot to the hero, just before they fail to kill them.

[Kaiaatzl]

That makes sense

[Scyphi]

I'm not 100% confident on what Interplay's tactics are with Steam Descent either, but I confess I'm not that optimistic about what they might be. True, it is possible that re-releasing them on Steam could be to rebuild interest in precursor to an upcoming new release, or to test the waters with a new release in mind, at least. But in all honesty, I'm thinking its more of just Interplay looking for a quick way to pay the bills with what they've already got, especially seeing that the word on the street is that their new titles they've released since their "revival" haven't overall performed ideally on the market.

Besides, Interplay hasn't given much of any indications that they've been working on such a thing anyway (save Descent-for-Wii, which they STILL persistently have listed as "in development"), and they haven't exactly been that secretive about their projects. If they're working on something, they generally give some kind of public indications that they are. Though I admit Steam Descent WAS a bit of a surprise...

Speaking of, Interplay has updated their list of in development games on their site recently. Still bears all the same titles as before, but now listed in a slightly different order and some have been removed. One project that had been codenamed Project V1-something that I had always assumed was some larger game project (probably for the Fallout franchise or in relation to it) is now, curiously, no longer listed. I can either assume this means it got canned, or Interplay opted to keep it under wraps and hid away references to it. I'm favoring the former, given Interplay's track record. Beyond that, re-releases largely seem to be Interplay's gameplan for the time being.

Still...one can hope. A wild and admittedly fanciful possibility is that Interplay has kept Descent-for-Wii listed is because it's become a cover for a different Descent-related project, and they've kept it listed as Descent-for-Wii so to be deliberately misleading, so to catch fans by surprise when it comes time to make official announcements. But Interplay's not THAT clever...are they?

[Kaiaatzl]

I doubt it.
Like I said I can't say what I may or may not know.

[VANGUARD]

We have a group of people here who are fond of a game. Some can do artwork, music, maps/levels, etc, and as long as we have that passion and that we get along so well, this can last quite a long time.

I sadly had to move to other games. I don't know how likely it is to have a digital copy of descent to run on Linux. There are days I dream about it though.