From a gameplay perspective, Peterson plans to use Descent Underground to expose modern gamers who might not have been playing games in the mid-1990s (or might not even have been alive in the mid-1990s) to Descent’s 6-DoF style—but to do so in a modernized fashion. For the game's single player campaign, that means not going back and recreating D1 and D2’s find-the-three-keys-nuke-the-reactor level progression but instead giving players more interesting and varied things to do.
"You’re not actually in the cockpit," explained Peterson as we delved into gameplay specifics. "You’re actually flying a drone," he said, "so, you’re in your harvester—think of Dune—and a contractor comes from Earth and says, 'I need ten thousand pallets of this type of ore,' and three or four teams will pick up that contract, land on an asteroid, and launch their drones." The drones you’ll be flying—from a first-person view, or else it wouldn’t be Descent—run the modern gaming gamut in terms of abilities. Some will be suited to take and deal out tremendous amounts of damage, some will be able to repair other ships or extend their shields, and others will be able to drill through walls. The idea is to introduce a more modern role-based multiplayer experience with team objectives and the ability for teams to balance out with players of different play styles and abilities, without falling into a MOBA-style pit—because Descent is an FPS, not a MOBA.
Peterson has been very up-front about wanting to give the Descent name the full AAA treatment, so that also means not reusing the original game's video or sound assets. "No, we’re not doing sound and graphics from the original—we’re bringing everything up," he said. "The assets are owned by somebody other than Interplay. So we can do prequel derivatives—we’ll show you the genesis of some of these things, like the PyroGX."
...Descendent Studios has not been completely honest with the community. A lie of omission is still a lie...
..Doing this won't be easy and would require a lot of hard work (you try reinventing a universe without actually reinventing it at the same time), and to me, Descendant hasn't shown that yet, and indeed, haven't really tried...
Quote from: PyroJockey on March 20, 2015, 05:08:44 AM...Descendent Studios has not been completely honest with the community. A lie of omission is still a lie...They have not omitted anything:QuotePeterson has been very up-front about wanting to give the Descent name the full AAA treatment, so that also means not reusing the original game's video or sound assets. "No, we’re not doing sound and graphics from the original—we’re bringing everything up," he said. "The assets are owned by somebody other than Interplay. So we can do prequel derivatives—we’ll show you the genesis of some of these things, like the PyroGX."
We have had a ton of requests for the Iconic Pyro-GX ship in our game - but being a prequel, we were planning to show the BIRTH of the 1st iteration of the Pyro - in the single player portion of the game.However, tons and I mean TONS of people have emailed us asking for it, so we are thinking of adding it earlier as an add on opportunity with an exclusive campaign version - only available during the campaign - and it would be the genesis of that iconic ships line.However, we want to know how everyone feels about adding it now, or waiting until later, so we are going to have a poll and let you guys decide.We promised open development and we are committed to making that happen, so Descendents, vote, and let us know your thoughts, and we the team will honor your decision.
This is contrary to what I (and Lothar and other active users at the Descendant Studios forums) have been seeing, as I'm seeing they are trying hard and making a big effort to listen to the Descent community and to implement a lot of the stuff suggested by us to bring that original Descent feel and to bring a bit of continuity, even if the game's story will be set several decades before Descent.So I can't agree with the 'haven't really tried' part at all...