Topic: Will Interplay Ever Release a Descent 4?

[Pumo]

As Sidhe and the poll said, I think the answer is a simple 'NO'. Period.

 

[VANGUARD]

Is Interplay even alive? Descent is still the third one next to be made, and the other two say "2012" as a release date.

[Sidhe Priest]

The issues with Descent 4 are:

1. Storyline continuity. With Dravis blown up, what's there left to do? D3 was the final game in the series.
2. The complexity of it all. Descent, practically, requires a large world populated with robots with real 3D 6DF level design. Not many people who can actually design all that and make it coherent. D3 took a long time to develop partly because of all the constant changes and difficult creation process management.
3. Limited audience (in chickened-out "marketing" view anyway). The pseudo-argument goes like this: Descent is hard to play, so it either gets dumbed down (partly the D3 issue) or not made at all. Either way, being partly flight sim, it's not an "easy game to learn" (like groundpounders), goes the pseudo-argument. Truth is simpler: many groundpounders are actually fairly complex when it comes to controls and gameworld. The interesting ones anyway. As it happens the thrill of a game is directly related with complexity: an easy, simple game gets boring fairly quickly. Even Tetris has a plot and a complot and complexity. Being a puzzle game, it's more complex than just dropping stones. Same thing with fully interactive 3D games - the more interaction and the more lifelike (and that means more complex also), the more interesting they are. The purpose of a game is to convey life (the thrill of a game is teaching what life is, even if fictional).
What this means is that a game like Descent has to be more like a "real" flight simulator and less like a slow walker. And have a working universe of its own, maybe. At the level of the game's storyline anyway...

[-<WillyP>-]

I agree with all but number one. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions that could be explored. I could see a plot line along the lines of, the transmode virus was not Dravis's creation, (after all, it was an alien virus) he was just a 'useful idiot' in the greater scheme of the aliens who are planing a hostile takeover of earth.

[Kaiaatzl]

Even if there wasn't anything left to do in the story, that never stopped TV producers.  Why should it stop game developers?

[Sidhe Priest]

O-o-o, intrigue.

[Scyphi]

I agree with all but number one. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions that could be explored. I could see a plot line along the lines of, the transmode virus was not Dravis's creation, (after all, it was an alien virus) he was just a 'useful idiot' in the greater scheme of the aliens who are planing a hostile takeover of earth.

Ditto this times infinity. The storyplot for Descent was far from resolved in D3. There is SO MUCH that not only CAN be explored, it almost NEEDS to be explored. Personally, I think Descent could easily have another three games in it until you start running out of old plot elements and need to bring in new ones, and as Kaiaatsel aptly said, that wouldn't stop game developers. If there's profit in it, they'll do it. And there is at least some profit in it, otherwise Interplay wouldn't have bothered to do what they have.

As for the rest, you are sadly correct Sidhe Priest, except I will state that the complexity of building a balanced Descent game doesn't strike me as quite that difficult, assuming the key members involved are already quite familiar with how Descent works. Example: if us fans were somehow involved in the development in D4, I think the only problem we'd have is all agreeing on what we'd want. Building it wouldn't be a problem if we all had the necessary tools, time, and knowledge (that right there is probably the biggest things keeping us fans from just doing it ourselves).

[VANGUARD]

I agree with most. I do feel you could go on. Dravis dead doesn't mean end of game. It's possible to go on another chapter into the Descent world.

Descent 4 could still have the same style of gaming and not change a ton. Call of Duty hasn't changed much in years. Maybe that's a bad example. Doom hasn't much. Yeah, in some ways, but, okay, maybe worse example.

Descent 3 could work, except the people behind it are either gone, or not interested (my guess anyway)
Interplay doesn't seem to be anywhere. Where is outrage? Parallax?

[Sidhe Priest]

The point of this is, with D3 a sales flop (not like it was advertised much though), and the game itself being complex, and the developers not at it, Interplay won't be giving it a priority.

[Sidhe Priest]

Still, a game other than Descent makes sense for two reasons... One - it can be made independently of all Descent-related copyrights, trademarks, and other fluff.

There's the Infinity Engine: http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33 - it's been perpetually stuck in development, but it might work for a Descent-like game with features like interplanetary travel and zooming onto a planet surface. Opens up a lot of detail - planet re-entry, etc. The one bit that wasn't coherent in Descent games is that the player ships are supposed to be interplanetary spaceships, and that automatically means very high speeds and open space travel (remember the asteroid belt and D3 end movies?). And then the poor things are limited to car-like crawls. Not serious.

Two - there's so much more detail and realism possible with an engine like that, it'd be silly to limit only to mine/surface-crawling.

[Sidhe Priest]

By itself, the notion of piles of metal of varying size floating in space or air isn't anything that original.

[-<WillyP>-]

The high speed interplanetary travel was handled by the warp core engine and wasn't used in the mines or on the planet surface. The details of which were a bit hazy, but that wasn't the focus of the game. Just like in a book, there aren't detailed description of how the character slept every night, or when he used the bathroom.

Given the confined area of a mine, the Pyro didn't really need (inner planetary? near surface?) extreme high speed capabilities. I am sure it took a huge amount of energy just to accomplish the anti-gravity hovering.

[Scyphi]

Good thing your energy banks for your weapons seems to be powered separately from those engines, then.

Sidhe Priest, while all of those ideas are indeed intriguing, and no doubt worth exploring for a Descent game, at the same time I would think that it would be unwise for any Descent game to be too heavily dependent on them, especially the space travel elements. Not against a Descent-in-space levels or the such, but put too much focus on that, and then it'll be more like Freespace than Descent. Furthermore, I think there would be an element of action to all of that, or the game would feel lackluster (or at least it would to me). So, say, if you had to journey through an asteroid belt and have to dodge asteroids while also getting sniped at by baddies, then that'd be good. But if it's just cruising from star system to star system...that wouldn't be as great...unless the trip was super fast, and it wouldn't take long to reach action again. Like Hunter's Basewars. You cross numerous star systems in that mod, but the trip from system to system is instantaneous, and you're almost never far from action. In that case, it could work for Descent, and work well, depending on how you do it, and how much focus you give it (too much and again it loses the Descent feel, but too little, and it'll feel pointless).

Personally, though, I think fans would be most happy with a more traditional Descent game, with the classic delving into mines and blowing stuff up in general, and as such, I feel that should still be any hypothetical future Descent game's major focus. That has always been Descent's schtick, so why change it?

That said, I'm going to repeat something I've said before, and say that I feel any D4 (or something like it) should have a very destructive environment. You shoot at a wall, it takes visible damage, you continue to shoot at it, and you can destroy it, etc. I've been giving a lot of thought about the gameplay mechanics for such a Descent-like game, and I'm convinced it could not only work, but work very, very, well.

[Sidhe Priest]

That's what the experimental warpcore is for, to avoid cruising between planets and systems. Other ships without the experimental thingie though are still in for slow sightseeing. Or space-staring.

D3's Fusion engine already has blastable/deformable terrain. And destructable brushes in levels. Just not used that much.

Atmospheric entry gives its own game issues (have you noticed in every videoclip the Pyro spawns next to a planet, not inside the planet's atmosphere? - maybe the warp mechanism has to avoid strong gravity pulls). Like having to do stealthy re-entries. Or being intercepted on entry/descent. More plot devices here.

[Kaiaatzl]

Atmospheric entry gives its own game issues (have you noticed in every videoclip the Pyro spawns next to a planet, not inside the planet's atmosphere? - maybe the warp mechanism has to avoid strong gravity pulls). Like having to do stealthy re-entries. Or being intercepted on entry/descent. More plot devices here.

I think that was really a visual device to let the player see a 'stunning' animation of each planet.  I doubt the writers went into that amount of detail for a game whose story has a beginning and an end, but no middle.
Though on that topic; meteorologically speaking, from looking at the exit movies, neither Zeta Aquilae nor Brimspark actually have an atmosphere.