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Genesis Rising Postmortem & Pathfinder WoTR
🕑 Added 2023-04-15 16:07:17 +0000 UTCAfternoon Everyone!
I've mainly been heads down getting the last bits of Pathfinder content wrapped up, as with luck I'll be able to get the video done by the end of the month and before they release even more DLC for the thing since they dropped a piece of it in early March. I did have some footage get zapped from the data loss in December, but luckily not a ton so going back to regrab some stuff shouldn't be an issue.
On the Genesis Rising side of things, one of the developers left quite a few insightful comments on the video. Development was very messy over a period of six years with the goal of the game changing back and forth between multiplayer and singleplayer focus, and nearly every aspect of the game was restarted at a few points as technology kept catching up to them.
He left some more development stuff in the comment thread, which are actually far too long to meaningfully capture here, but the ship genetics system in particular is fascinating. A lot of other effects like ships "bleeding out" into zero gravity also didn't make it into the game in full form due to hardware limitations, so there was something pretty nuts floating around at one point.
Other highlights include:
- The scriptwriter was approaching the story from a more mythological angle compared to some hard scifi concepts other members were interested in, hence getting lines like "we've arrived at the last unexplored galaxy in the universe".
- The planned gene system was originally complicated enough to be like "creating the building blocks for a language in growing emergent forms", so it becoming drag and drop simple icons irritated many as the team had done a lot of research on genetics and wanted to go full throttle.
- The lead in developing the game's tech and gameplay worked at Ubisoft as a lead as well for a few years, until "vanishing into a cottage in the woods of Serbia."
- Several others are working on developing MetaHumans and other Unreal Engine technology directly for Epic now. One was developing tech for Weta Workshop.
- The art director and writer for the game is now working on the FPS game RIPOUT. I was actually contacted by him too through email after the video, and looking at images for the game you can see that biopunk(?) influence living on.
So there's more to look into on the thread below the video, but it was really cool to see a lot of insight into how a game was made that barely had info of its existence floating around outside of the Steam store page.
I also asked the RIPOUT dev, and he gave me a "camera scan" of the CRUCIFORM: DEFIANCE comic in its entirety which you can read from my drive here. Hopefully it'll be archived on an online comic reading website, since while it's not scanned in the most pristine form possible, it's at least something compared to it becoming lost media.
Anyways, everything's on schedule.
Thanks as always for your support!
Comments
Gotmefedora
oh my god i've been waiting for the WOTR for SO LONG
Mr_Girr
Man this comic is insane. It makes me think of SCORN, or rather, what the wworld of SCORN would look like if it were functional. BioPunk is such a unique and bizzare style.
Jeanette H
I love that game devs actively reach out and tell all about what could've been. Thanks for sharing, Mandy. You're a treasure.
OneShotBruh
In the WotR review, will you touch on the amount of content for the mythic paths? I bought the game in September but I refunded it after reading that people were very underwhelmed by the definitive edition update (or whatever it's called) and the amount of content it brought for the mythic paths (golden dragon and devil paths were specifically a problem IIRC). Can't wait for the review, the Kingmaker one got me hooked on the game and I hope this one will hook me on WotR as well.
Matt Navey
that comic looks like the fake comic they'd make as a prop for a movie. in a good way.
Hugogogogogogogogo
Oh, I'm sad that comic didn't go anywhere after that single issue, it looked cool
Sean Wolf
Man, it's so freaking cool to see all of this awesome info about basically lost games come from your videos. It's like an unexpected gift from the universe and it's super awesome. Thanks for everything dude
