Might! Magic! X! Legacy!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 22, 2013

It’s ALIVE!!!!!

Okay. This fills me with happy. I guess they looked at what all of us indies were doing, and said, “Holy cow! Maybe there’s still gold in them dar hills!” Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the gist of what they said. Now, to be fair, I doubt that Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon even appeared on their radar. But I’ll still think of myself as being one of the trend-setters. 🙂 But I’m sure what’s happening with Legend of Grimrock, Wasteland 2, and Project Eternity really DID influence their decision.

My guess? It’s not really a “AAA” game. It’s not got that kind of top-shelf budget (in the eight-figure range in U.S. dollars) that a publisher would put into a Call of Duty or Tomb Raider. But it’s still a big project. We’ll know more this weekend, as it is being presented at PAX East.

What this really means to me is a confirmation of the crap I was saying on Monday – “Old School” is back, baby. Which kinda makes the term irrelevant, since it soon won’t be so “old” anymore. I don’t expect it to replace the newer styles of games at all. With games like Mass Effect and Skyrim and Diablo III making money hand over fist, those aren’t going away either. We’re just (“just?”) experiencing another renaissance of RPGs.

I can’t get over how awesome this is.

Okay – now, this does have one itsy bitsy potentially negative impact. It means that after all my efforts as an indie to make the kinds of games the big publishers have ignored, I’ll now be competing far more ‘head-to-head’ than I ever anticipated. I mean, this is a dusting-off of one the classics that inspired Frayed Knights in the first place. How do I compete with that?

Amusingly enough, I’m the opposite of worried. I think it’s awesome. Yeah, production-value wise, there’s no way I can go head-to-head on production values. Even if their budget is “only” a couple of million dollars, that’s astronomically more than my shoestring budget. But as all of you who have played the first game can attest – Frayed Knights is a totally different game than those that inspired it. I’m already stepping up my game on the sequels, and so while I may not be able to be quite as pretty, I’m pretty sure I can take ’em on the gameplay front.

But I really don’t expect it to be an either / or thing. I think as “competition” goes, as long as I don’t release FK2 within two weeks of this game, it’s actually going to be beneficial. All this really does is validate the market and hopefully bring more attention to this style of game. I feel it can only help my sales.

In other words:

BRING IT ON!

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Tesh said,

“A rising tide lifts all boats”? 🙂
Rampant Coyote said,

That. Exactly.
Xenovore said,

Hmm, looks decent. But is the movement the same as the old ones? (The “move one cell at a time, only able to look in 4 directions”; it kinda looked like it.) I hope not; that can work for a dungeon crawler like Legend of Grimrock (although still slightly annoying there), but for outdoor scenes, hell no.
Rampant Coyote said,

It kinda looks like that, but that wasn’t a restriction in the original series since Darkside of Xeen. So I dunno.
Adamantyr said,

Only concern… the subtitle “Legacy”… didn’t exactly do Tron much good. 🙂
OttoMoBiehl said,

I must admit, this looks interesting and, for me, was totally unexpected. Perhaps this is the beginning of some good things to come in the CRPG arena aside from the wonderful things that have happened on Kickstater.
Cuthalion said,

I managed to install Might & Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum after finding it in my garage as a teenager and getting my dad to put a 5 1/4″ drive into my computer to run it. I pored over the manual gleefully, not concerned about the woefully dated graphics.

Ultimately, I couldn’t get past the first couple fights or really even figure out how to play or find my way around.

I don’t think there’s a lesson there.
TheOldFarmer said,

This announcement lost me at the UbieSoft Logo this is the same company who basically called all PC gamer thieves and said they were not going to make any more games for the PC. Now that the console market is go big or go home, they come crawling back to the PC market like a wolf slinking in to a sheep herd looking for an easy kill. This game could be the second coming of Planescape Torment (OOPS being done by those good guys at in Exile) and I would not touch it with a 10′ pole. We as consumers have to remember the company’s that crap on us and vote with our wallets. There is a reason I support indi games, part of it is innovation but part of it is these games are made by people who care about gaming and have a passion for their work, and most of them are not corporate D bags.
BarryB said,

I hope they put Caneghem back in charge of this, or at least give him a strong advisory role that isn’t merely a sop to soothe oldtimers like myself. It could be great; or it could be another M&M IX. Or even worse.

At least UbiSoft is finally doing more with the legacy titles it owns than trying to charge other companies like Stardock a fortune who want to do successors. Now, if only they’d take on Darklands–or at least stop harassing teams that form at the rate of one or two a year from trying to remake the game.
Kyle Haight said,

For all that Ubisoft has dumped on the PC market in the past, there is something to be said for rewarding them if and when they treat us right. Carrot and stick.

That said, there’s no way I’m pre-ordering this. Wait for release, wait for user reviews.
Chev said,

BarryB, Caneghem works for EA now (he’s in charge of C&C) so there’s no chance he’d be involved in an Ubi game.
jwmeep said,

I do feel that Ubisoft is probably just trying to capitalize on the success of Grimrock (main reason I can think of going back to step based) and kickstarter fueled resurgence of CRPGs.

That said, I’m all for it. The nolstalgia boom has been good for late 90s style CRPGs but first person party based games were kind of ignored. (Aside from Jay, Olderbytes, and a few other indies.) Besides, M&M 9 left the bar kind of low, so they can only go up from here.

I do agree with Oldfarmer it does feel exploitative though.
Kyle Haight said,

It seems like the large game companies can’t win. When the old-school CRPG Kickstarters took off, people said it showed how stupid the big players were that they didn’t make those kinds of games any more. But when a big developer takes notice of the demand and actually *does* try to make an old-school game people complain that they’re being ‘exploitative’.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

On a different note, given the projected release date for MMX when did they start development on this?