From the creator of Shadowrun... Shadowrun

[Hawkbit]

This looks great.

However, I work in downtown Seattle, right in the areas in the game.  Today's downtown Seattle looks more dystopian than 2050's.  :)  Needs more homeless people selling Real Change newspapers.

[Zetor]

Hawt. With this and Wasteland 2, this year may not be so bad for the CRPG. And then of course PE and Torment++ in 2014...

Completely random nitpick: why was the enemy wizard chaincasting a heal spell only to have 2/3 of the heal undone due to drain? He could've stood on a leyline tile at least  

[Ghambit]

I'm some ways, as i was watching that, it kinda looked like this would have worked as a MOD for X-com. I have not been following this title, is it multiplayer?

Stand in line with the rest of us waiting for the x-com editor.  However, tbh I'd prefer whatever they're currently using in the game.  X-com is fairly one dimensional, albeit well presented. 
As for MP, no it is not, but there's no way in hell the SR releases w/o at least the option.

My guess it'll minimally come with local co-op.   

Thing with tbs games is all they really need is a shared desktop to work perfectly fine; wouldn't require much netcode really and what little there is remains 3rd party.  I had a mod I'd thought of in another engine that pulled this off whilst locking out certain players when it wasnt their turn.   No reason they couldn't do something like that here.

[Lantyssa]

Completely random nitpick: why was the enemy wizard chaincasting a heal spell only to have 2/3 of the heal undone due to drain? He could've stood on a leyline tile at least  

Stamina drain.  It'd only be physical damage if he really overdid it.

[Zetor]

Completely random nitpick: why was the enemy wizard chaincasting a heal spell only to have 2/3 of the heal undone due to drain? He could've stood on a leyline tile at least  

Stamina drain.  It'd only be physical damage if he really overdid it.

Hmm, that could be, though I thought it was hp damage based on the floating damage text. As you can tell, I don't play mages -- I prefer mad scientist types.

(Let me tell you about the SR4 campaign where I was the only person in the group without any extra initiative passes... hey, at least it allowed me to think up witty one-liners while everyone else was busy being useful in combat! )

[Fabricated]

I wonder how much intelligence/charisma/etc are going to play into the game.

Like, a chromed-out troll sammy is goddamn near invincible in straight up combat if built right (ignoring the low essence), but in PnP you'd have a lot harder time with basically having anti-charisma and being so stupid you need sticky notes on your guns to know which end to point at the enemy.

[Ghambit]

It wont play a roll in a squad, which is the point of the game.  Let the hacker telepresence in for all that smartay shit.  I'm gonna assume they'll balance the statpoints through the squad and/or scale encounters accordingly... just like in the PnP version.  Shadowrun is not an IP where a jack-of-all-trades type character should survive the night.

[carnifex27]

I am super excited for this game. The important part for me is that everything in the game is created with the editor which will be included in the game. If the editor is more like NWN's than NWN2's, this may be the game that at least rivals BloodBowl for hours played with me. The most exciting thing for me about that video was that the camera never rotated, which hopefully means that I won't have to deal with 3d art assets while creating a run to punish entertain my friends.

edit to add: I normally avoid DLC, but this game could make money off of me for a very long time if they charged a few bucks for a new 5-10 hour run, especially if it included new skins for the editor.

[Fabricated]

Provided their editor allows for art assets to be imported and has good documentation on how to make tilesets I dunno if you'd have to worry about that.

[carnifex27]

Now I'm even more excited 

[Fabricated]

I mean shit, remember the community packs for NWN? I still install NWN at some point after I format an HDD or build a new PC to play some of the fan modules I really liked.

Speaking of that, I really should just download everything good and back it up since we can't count on NWNVault being around forever.

[carnifex27]

Damn yous guys.... I just bought NWN from gog.com. Of course I had to call my bank to release my debit card for international transactions to do so.  While on hold I also bought System Shock 2 and something called Starflight 1+2 that looked interesting.

[Fabricated]

Go play Excrucio Eternum and Elegia Eternum again. Those were great. Ditto with Honor Among Thieves.

[carnifex27]

I am downloading those now even though I never played them. My nostalgia for NWN comes from having been in  the USNavy when it came out.  Most of my division would smuggle their computers on board when we went underway and connect them in a LAN, but internet access wasn't an option. Worms and NWN took up most of our free time, worms for the PvP and NWN for the story telling.  If you could craft a decent adventure for your shipmates to crawl through, it lead to pretty decent bragging rights :)

[Morat20]

Damn yous guys.... I just bought NWN from gog.com. Of course I had to call my bank to release my debit card for international transactions to do so.  While on hold I also bought System Shock 2 and something called Starflight 1+2 that looked interesting.

Dang, starflight is old school. I played those back in the day. They're very much "you can fuck yourself and make the game unwinnable" games. Although they're both hilarious in places too. :)

[koro]

Hm.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=539736

1) The promised DRM-free version for backers will not support future DLC additions beyond the original campaign and the Berlin DLC. Steam will be required for those due to a previously undisclosed licensing agreement with Microsoft.

To honor our original promise of a DRM-free version of the game, the Harebrained Account Website will also contain a downloadable version of Shadowrun Returns that does not include Steam integration. While this version will include the Seattle story (and Berlin, via a one-time update), without Steam integration, it will be unable to browse and play community-created stories from within the game. Any future DLC will only be available through Steam.

2) The Kickstarter stretch goal second city, Berlin, has been shunted into a post-release paid DLC (included for backers, but not otherwise) instead of being included with the game at release.

[A-02] Q: What will the save system be like?
A: We're planning a checkpoint system. No one on the team likes checkpoints better than save any time you want. But we're a small team with a LOT to do and save games are complicated. Thanks for understanding.

Q: Are you planning on making corpses lootable?
A: Corpse looting involves a loot system and associated systems that interact with it. As much as we wanted one and designed one, we don't have the funding to implement it in this version of the game. If we'd done like the SNES and Sega games and gave you one PC/character class and no race choices to play, we might have had time for it. We invested in giving you ownership of your character, knowing that we could add things like that down the road if the game were successful.

And a features comparison:

[Goreschach]

Splitting community content requirements like that seems a fine way to shoot yourself in the foot.

[Zetor]

Honestly, I'm fairly sure there was going to be a shadowrunnexus (or whatever) springing up after launch anyway, splintering the mod community... simply because the workshop will be limited to campaign files. There'll be a lot of mods that go deeper than that (including adding custom tilesets or portraits, which is a pretty big deal), so they wouldn't be supported even if there wasn't this microsoft DRM hurfblurf going on. See also: Skyrim nexus v steam workshop.

Having save points instead of 'real' save functionality is annoying. Is this a Moai limitation or something?

Looting... eh. I actually don't remember loot being much of a thing in shadowrun (except maybe bringing dead street sams to a street doc to cut out some of that sweet cyberware). Plus you can still have quest items and stuff scripted via the editor. Still, this is one of those features that may or may not be hacked into the game via a mod if their scripting layer is really as powerful as they say (other such features would be a special ammo system and maybe reputation).

[CmdrSlack]

Sooooo....as someone who missed the chance to kickstart this, and as someone who does not hate Steam, this changes nothing for me, right?

[Trippy]

The only difference I can see is that you have to pay from the Berlin DLC (if you want it). KS backers get it for free.

[koro]

I've got no dog in this race, but it seems that there are two major sticking points for people:

1. The game was marketed as being DRM-free in the general Kickstarter. Now it's DRM free, but only for backers, and only with a laundry list of restrictions. People are pissed due to a lack of transparency on the part of Harebrained, when they failed to disclose that Microsoft still owned the Shadowrun IP and that negotiations were ongoing. A reasonable assumption would have been that all of the potential licensing stuff was hashed out before the Kickstarter even came to be.

2. The second city (Berlin) was backed as a stretch goal on the premise that it was going to be part of the main game for everyone who plays the game - backer and non-backer alike - to have as part of the base package. This mentality is borne out if you look back at when Harebrained was tossing around the idea of a backer-only storyline revolving around Jake Armitage from the SNES Shadowrun that would tie into the story of the old 16-bit games, and how the backers were largely against such a thing because then non-backers would never see it.

The other stuff like the lack of a save system or loot are head-scratchers, but the two things above are what people are really drubbing Harebrained over.

[Lantyssa]

Dear gods!  A game will be on Steam.  What a shitty world we live in.

[kildorn]

That all seems a bit silly (splitting the versions like that), but the part that made me raise an eyebrow was the "previously undisclosed license agreement with Microsoft" bit. Aren't you supposed to disclose if you can or cannot do things like that in your kickstarter? Not show up months later and go "hey, you know all that shit we said we'd do? We actually can't, contractually. Teehee!"

[Paelos]

Dear gods!  A game will be on Steam.  What a shitty world we live in.

All my games are on steam. I guess I'm doing it wrong.

[Quinton]

I can understand somebody who was promised a DRM free direct download and got a Steam key might be angry about that, but as far as I can see they're providing DRM free direct download of the main game, editor, and the add on content that was part of the Kickstarter rewards / stretch goals.  Being outraged that future content (which has not yet been created) beyond that which was part of the Kickstarter is not going to be available DRM free seems a bit excessive.

Sounds like they do have a save system, just that it's classic checkpoint based (perhaps a little old-fashioned for modern gamers).  Didn't see the thing about no loot.  OMG NO LOOTZ!!!!111!1one

[Zetor]

That all seems a bit silly (splitting the versions like that), but the part that made me raise an eyebrow was the "previously undisclosed license agreement with Microsoft" bit. Aren't you supposed to disclose if you can or cannot do things like that in your kickstarter? Not show up months later and go "hey, you know all that shit we said we'd do? We actually can't, contractually. Teehee!"

There is some speculation that the exact terms of the license agreement were actually still under negotiation while the kickstarter was going on. It's also possible that MS was originally OK with a no-DRM setup, but once they saw that the game made almost 2mil and was slated to have multiple DLCs, they changed their minds.

The less favorable speculation says that HBS knew this from day 1 and was keeping quiet about it... but this scenario doesn't pass the basic "would I do this if I was a small dev house that lives and dies on the goodwill of players" test.

And hey, at least it isn't GFWL.  

[UnSub]

That all seems a bit silly (splitting the versions like that), but the part that made me raise an eyebrow was the "previously undisclosed license agreement with Microsoft" bit. Aren't you supposed to disclose if you can or cannot do things like that in your kickstarter? Not show up months later and go "hey, you know all that shit we said we'd do? We actually can't, contractually. Teehee!"

Nothing forces you to declare anything in your Kickstarter other than how awesome your game is going to be.

Yes, it should be disclosed, but then so should all sources of investment / revenue going into a title so that you know where the other funding is coming from and if you can trust it. But boring stuff like that gets in the way of SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, so companies leave it out.

[Kitsune]

Insert popcorn eating image macro here.

Oh hey, people aren't going to get what they were expecting from a Kickstarter project.  How could this be possible?

[Tebonas]

From all the reasons you can get mad at a Kickstarter this is by far the dumbest one.

People that didn't participate in the Kickstarter don't get the things promised to backers, that was to be expected.

People (that didn't particpate) who are too cheap to get the expansion can't use Mods based on that expansion, big shocker there.

The company wants to make money off expansions after the one they promised. Oh no, who would have thought.

[jakonovski]

Kickstarter is a fool's game anyway. If a business wants my money, they better have the product at hand, or they can give me a slice of the profits.

[Malakili]

Kickstarter is a fool's game anyway. If a business wants my money, they better have the product at hand, or they can give me a slice of the profits.

This is one of the reasons I've been willing to go in on alphas for games when they are willing to give me something playable immediately(Minecraft, Natural Selection 2, Project Zomboid, Prison Architect), but am very much not into Kickstarter for video games.

[Margalis]

Insert popcorn eating image macro here.

Oh hey, people aren't going to get what they were expecting from a Kickstarter project.  How could this be possible?

Ha ha yep.

Games change A LOT in development - and they should. A lot of these high-profile KS games raise money before they have any real design, and half of what they promise should realistically be highly subject to change or are straight up nonsense. Many of these companies are not particularly successful - if they don't have the ability to compete in the marketplace under normal circumstances they sure as hell don't have the crack planning ability to promise features before they've really even started work on the game or have a design beyond 2 paragraphs. The larger issue here is that mediocre companies finding old projects to remake has become a business model.

[Fabricated]

I'm not sure I care if I get a completely DRM-free GOG-style installer for the game or the least intrusive/annoying DRM platform version of the game.

So yeah, who gives a shit.

[Sky]

Actually, I'm hoping they'll offer a Steam key for the KS version. As long as it's not straight up malware/spyware or keep me from playing the game, DRM doesn't bother me at all.

[Tebonas]

Be happy then, thats what they said they'll do.

Steam Key + Direct Download Link for all Backers.