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Fallen Earth Previews: Preview Tour
MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh was recently given a tour of Icarus Studios' upcoming MMORPG, Fallen Earth. Today, she files this report.
By Carolyn Koh on September 15, 2009
Fallen Earth is a survival MMO based in the post-apocalyptic world around the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. It is a dark, modern-day horror setting that some will love and some will hate. Mutated horrors, zombies and other nightmare creatures abound, and players arm themselves with what they can find. Baseball bats, axes, spiked two-by-fours, guns and assault weapons may be found in this game which has a Mature rating for it's blood, gore and decaying human corpses hanging around.
Lead Game Designer, Lee Hammock took me on a tour of the game, beginning with the character creation. "We have a focus on body appearance," he said, "as we have a loot based system." Look and appearance change as a player progresses and there are many choices for customization, beginning at character creation. Lee pointed out their piercing and tattoo system as well as some customization available by gender such as body hair level for male characters and belly piercing for the female.
The newbie tutorial takes place in the ruins of the Hoover Dam where you start out in the cloning station. The last bastion of civilization is being torn down from within and you are trying to escape. The tutorial is the only portion of the game that has voice over which helps when you are learning a game and once you break out, you're on your own.
In Fallen Earth, players do not choose classes. "We have a skill based system," said Lee. "Players will gain advancement points as they progress through the world and can build characters with multiple stats, skills, mutation paths, trade skills and factions."
Mutations? That piqued my interest and Lee was happy to explain. "Everyone starts off with a mutation. It's in your genes." Players start of with an alpha mutation and that is a healing skill. They will then choose mutation paths to follow, and there are three fundamental types that mutations fall under: Restoration, Augmentation and Destruction. In similar fantasy MMO terms, Healing, Buffs and DPS?
"Not quite," said Lee. "The types describe the purpose of most of the mutations down that path." Augmentations would include all buffs, but some attacks were in there. Restoration are your heals, your resurrects but some can also be used to confuse enemies and drain their health. Destruction are mostly attacks, but de-buffs and conversely, they themselves are particularly resistant to the de-buffs they can utilize.
;)
The game is survival horror, so as can be expected, there is plenty of combat. Both PvE and PvP. Man is scrabbling to survive, so gameplay covers combat (including vehicular combat), exploration, scavenging and crafting. The landscape is harsh and the colors washed-out, giving the game a bleak, desolate appearance. Dead things, bleached skeletons, abandoned structures and vehicles dot the landscape in while you travel. On foot. There aren't any fast travel systems such as teleports or portals in game, but players will be able to obtain mounts such as horses and vehicles.
"There is also a crafting focus in Fallen Earth," said Lee. "95% of the items in game are craftable." Crafting itself has three elements: Tradeskills, Knowledge and Components. It is not just a simple press of a button to create an item. Players need all three elements and a recipe, then the item is assembled in real time. For example, a stew may take only a few minutes to make, but a car could take several weeks. For easier items, players may queue up the recipes for them to complete one after another while they are off running missions, but the more complex items may require players to remain in the workshop for much of the time.
The world (and the Grand Canyon) is larger than you may think. There are a total of 70 towns over three sectors at launch, and about 15 levels of game play in each sector. There are also factions in game. Six different factions that players may choose to align with, and no matter what you do, someone will hate you. "Each faction has two allies, two enemy and one arch-enemy faction," explained Lee. "Don't even try to play nice with everyone or you'll have every one hating you."
PvP is area-based and warnings will be flashed across the screen when players cross into and out of these areas. Every sector has its own main towns and some of these are faction based. Banking is also interesting in itself. There is a universal bank accessible from any vault and that is your personal stash. There are sector vaults which are regional and Banker vaults in certain towns that are faction based. Your mounts - the horses and vehicles will also carry loot for you, and if you belong to a clan, may have a separate clan vault as well.
;)
Fallen Earth is as "real" as a game can be. Horses have to be fed and stabled, vehicles have to be fueled and garaged. In keeping with this realism, player characters are clones and when they are killed in combat, unless their team mates have the ability to resurrect them in the field, they are re-cloned in the closes lab (LifeNet pod) from copies of their genetic material. The death mechanic is tuned specifically to discourage players from jumping into PvP and dying again and again. Players first start off with a small XP penalty - a slow-down on the earning of XP. If they die again within the first five minutes, that timer is extended, then a player can find that his stats begin to decrease and the length of time those stats remain depressed lengthens.
Fallen Earth has a Mature rating from the ESRB and the game will appeal to a certain niche of players. "We're not out to create a game that competes with WoW, but we have designed the game we want to design. A game we want to play. It is a post apocalyptic world," said the unapologetic Lee, "we don't drop F-bombs everywhere, but there will be strong language, and yes, there are drug and alcohol references. This is an adult game. Not a kid's game." Sex? Not so much. Not much really sexy about zombies with boils, sores and flies following them around, or a gritty, survival culture in a bleak desolate, devastated world.
"We plan to launch small," said Lee promising ongoing content adds, "but we will keep on going and keep on growing." Currently in Pre-Order early access, Fallen Earth launches on September 22nd, 2009 and is subscription based.
This game is awesome. That is all.
This game sounds more compelling to me than Aion, but everything depends on the implementation and how well the game will run on my PC. I am a little concerned that the graphics depicted alongside this story seem to be a step back from the last screenshots I've seen, but gameplay is what most intrigues me about this game.
Also, I'm not exactly excited that probably everything in the game will be some shade of brown. It does create that setting of post appocalyptic waste land, but on the other hand over time the blandness of the color scheme could become kind of tiring.
I am looking forward to this title, as I think this will fill some of lust for an 'adult' game. I'm particulary interested in the character creation though. It seems you got many ways to put the character together...infinite alts anyone :P
I am currently playing this and am enjoying it alot.
The big plus for me is that it is NOT a thempark MMO.
If I have to play another themepark I will throw up but sadly they are becoming the norm.
You are placed in the (large) world and left to it.
Sure there are bugs but I get to choose how I build my chracter and am not locked into a tank/dps template.
Most decent items are crafted and even during the headstart the economy is picking up nicely.
If anyone is tired of the "standard" MMO's that are coming out or are out currently, I urge you to try this out.
I expect good things in the future.
The game looks neat and fresh. Just a couple things that are keeping me from trying it right now:
1. a loot based system
2. is subscription based
Terranah - Unless i am mistaken there is a change in scenary once you reach sector 2 (well the very small area i have seen was a pretty vibrant forest/woodland). But since there is so much to do i havn't managed to view all the content yet. I dont really notice the desert draining me yet personally as i'm sidetracked but enough other things going on.
Palebane - "loot based" is kind of a decieving term especially if you compare it to say loot based like in warcraft where the best is gotten from endgame raiding or arena...Since it is pretty much all player crafted loot it is very easy to craft yourself nearly the best equipment..with the sheer amount of resources (randomly attained aswell as static specific nodes) you can take on a couple of tradeskills and still be powerful at fighting...(and being able to work on crafting while questing/exploring or not even logged on makes crafting much easier to gain)
There is 'dps' on weapons but really the dps comes from if you can aim or not..someone with a newbie crossbow or wooden plank with immaculate aim will out do someone with no aiming skill and an 'uber assault rifle of doom' or 'demonic sword of death' (not actual items..i think ..:p).
For me this is a really enjoyable game that is giving me options on how i want my avatar to be rather than a linear path.. It is not perfect with some glitches and crashes still (Which is why release date was pushed back so really it is early-early access at the moment), but there is definately is enough depth to keep me entertained for along time.
At least it is not a another themepark full of mindless drivel.
I played beta and they improved it 100% before it was over. Im downloading it as we speak and am very much looking forward to playing again. I think the draw for me is the setting, not to mention how easy they could add content, they could just keep adding to the map. I think there is huge potential with there great base in place.
Awsome game...apart from some minor things that need tweaking this is a fresh new game experience...with tons of potential
Most fun Ive had in ages, been playing since start of early start access, there is still work to be done on the server as its a treacle fight at times, but seeing as its a single server and huge open world, I am more than forgiving on that score, that tied in with some of the most open dev,s who do actualy care for their game not PRODUCT...
Patching has been not bad, server restarts a few but not every 4 hours like some launches, a number of bugs allot relating to the server lag issues, but each patch its been improving in steady chunks, game play and stories well they suck u in,and make you want to find out whats going on, and the crafting is not a second job for people without souls, nearly everyone is a crafter to some degree as it runs as you play.
Rough diamond would be unfair, more of a slightly dirty diamond but has the feeling of depth and exploration that is soooo sadly missing from the cookie cutters,(with wings on in some cases) games .
First game in years and I mean years i can recommend on these forums, last one was EvE at launch it was that long ago. However do research it a bit it will not be everyones cup of tea as it is a FPS MMO.
P.S try using the frying pans as weapons in the early lvls, big time for the zombie like creatures, the meaty Thudanck is just so wrong in the pleasure it gives.
I plan to give it a shot. I've been talking a lot here about supporting indy devs who are willing to take a chance. I don't think the graphics look all that hot judging by screenshots, but if the game play is fun, the graphics are more than good enough.
This game is just small enough and niche enough that the player base may be able to highly influence future development. I'd like to see it start to lean more in a sandbox direction than it does now. Crafting sounds interesting, with shades of SWG crafting.
All of the other games I am really looking forward to are a ways off (The Secret World, Earthrise, Mortal Online, Guild Wars 2), and I am tired of having nothing interesting to play. I am willing to jump in early on this game and see if the devs keep a steady pace of improving it.
I just went ahead and bought the pre-order. I haven't purchased a game in so long I am willing to take a chance and give Fallen Earth a try. See you FE players in game.
Overheard in the chat box: "You're not really a girl. Girls don't play Fallout games."
It's the depressing graphics that keeps them away, probably more than anything else. But I'm here to tell you (and I have a Masters in Fine Art, and I care about these things), the graphics is deceptively good, and it grows on you. Yes, it's not twee like Aion. But it works with the feel of the game, and I've found that the more I play the more I appreciate the work that went into the graphics.
Actually that could be a metaphor for the whole game, it grows on you. As others have said, this is the first game to come along in ages that merits a strong recommendation to give it a try.
I actually tried it out in the Open Beta for a few hours, then dropped it and tried out Aion, which had the opposite effect: the more I played it the less I liked it. Aion graphics, especially the character graphics, is just too twee. So I removed it from my computer and, since there was nothing better to do, I took a second look at Fallen Earth. This time I stayed around a while longer, did several quests, started gathering and crafting....and got hooked. So I paid for the pre launch, got my ATV and I'm off and running.
Finally, finally, after over a year of looking for something post WoW, post AoC, even post LOTRO....FINALLY, I've found a game with depth that gets better, not worse, as I play it. The immersion is great, there is very little grind. Even restarting a new character is fun because there are so many starting places.
For those of you who don't think Aion is the bee's knees, give Fallen Earth a try. I think you'll like it. I sure do.
Thanks for posting. I'm really looking forward to getting into the game. My theory is that if the game is growing on you, it's because there is depth to it that can't be found in the current AAA titles. I had the same problem you did. Lotro, for example, was fun, but I quit the game twice with a year between tries. I would get all the way up to around level 40-42 and just quit due to boredom. The game doesn't change, you just go from area to area and level. There was no community, or non-combat aspect to the game. Even exploration was pretty lame after a short time in the game.
The big games out now tend to be very shallow and things just scale in a pretty linear way upward toward level cap. You get stronger, faster, better gear, etc, but that's really all you get. Once you cap and play through the content, you can either re-roll or dedicate *all* of you free time to getting into raiding. No thanks.
As for the thing about females playing these games, there just aren't enough gameplay options. SWG had a ton of real women playing the game because you had many choices beyond combat gameplay. This isn't to say that women don't like combat, or that men don't like non-combat play. I'm actually about 50/50 on the issue. I don't feel the need to be a hero who is constantly in battle.
One of my theories about the SWG community being so rich back in the day was that the game was very inclusive. There was a lot of room in the skill and profession systems to allow you to play the game pretty much any way you wanted. There was also a lot of room for creativity in the crafting and player housing systems. These features drew a more diverse crowd of people, including more creative minds in general. Some of the non-combat or hybrid classes such as Doctor, BioEngineer, Creature Handler, and Ranger offered gameplay to even more types of people. This opened the game up for more social situations (weddings, parties, festivals, concerts, theater, etc, etc) that weren't even a part of the game's design. Today's combat focused games tend to only draw people in who like combat. Those who would prefer something more are messing around in virtual worlds like SecondLife, playing MMO's that they really don't like much, or not playing them at all anymore.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with people who only like combat, but it does severely limit the types of personalities you will find in a combat-only MMO community. When you have a good mixture of all types of people due to inclusive gameplay, I believe the game comes alive.
I enjoyed the game, I've been a LONG time beta tester, but honestly, I can't get over the aiming system. It's just a deal breaker for me. It encourage ways too much bunny hoping, packet manipulation, and all kinds of shamless combat tactics which ruin PvP.
Give me target locking, and I'm sold.
oh dear gawd, NO, enough of that archaic pap!
Good thing there are already systems in place to fight that stuff.As if games with auto-target do not come with their own issues.
This isn't unreal/quake like FPS combat, its much slower and tactical. Go ahead, try jumping around like a fool.
Interesting read. However, I miss any judgements, ratings, opinions or comments by the author. The article is basically a list of facts about the game with a few comments by the games developers, where I'd in addition be interested if the mentioned stuff works out as intended and is fun to play or not. Well, nice read nonetheless.
I wonder if they have individual settings for chest hair (light) and back hair (very heavy). I just wanna be me!
Since I was in beta for Fallen Earth this new review holds some of my views on the this new mmo.
http://mmofury.com/Beta/fallen-earth-review.html
LMAO. That review is some dumb crap.
Sorry.
Not very helpful. What is wrong with it?
His points have already been addressed in the thread he made in the gaming forum.
Esentialy: There is nothing wrong with the animations, its the animation blend system that needs work, the animations are incredibly well done. The price, is genre standard. The shadows and engine features are a product of the game features, the ground can be transformed (ALA: SWG) , so no, there is no shadow baking, all shadows are dynamic, thousands of players are another reasion for the somewhat lower than single player game graphic features.
As for his 1990's comments. Lets have some perspective shall we?
Fallen earths graphical style, and capability's can be compared to half-life 2. However half-life two had the benefit of being single player, and very small spaces.
Sure, it does not have some of the more advanced shading FX, or baked in shadows and whatnot, but half-life didn't support thousands of people in an HUGE seamless open world as well, they are confined spaces with views detailed out and optimized, there is only one path.
I agree that the game is not polished, and at time, a bit choppy. But come on, nothing is game breaking, and they did get the fun in first. Of course that's a matter of opinion.
If you liked SWG Pre-CU, buy this game. If you liked SWG Post CU/NGE, you won't like this.
Well, I think calling the graphics in this game anything like HL2 is a bit of a stretch of imagination. I bought FE last night and installed it. The graphics are pretty good as long as the game turns out to be fun and interesting, but they are definitely lacking when compared to a 'next gen' MMO such as AoC and Aion. Christ, look at screenshots of Earthrise. Again, I know this is an indy game, and this is why I bought it. I would be stupid to expect next-gen graphics. If I had to say the graphics in FE reminded me of anything, it would be the PC version of the Chronicles of Riddick prison game.
I have a Core i7 gaming rig with quad SLI GTX 295's, so I have all of the settings in FE maxed. In my mind, it's no where near HL2 with the settings cranked all the way up, but then I wouldn't expect it to be. For being an indy MMO, it looks great once you get used to the limited color pallet. Frankly, I don't even care at this point. I just want to play something that isn't a cookie cutter AAA mmo. This one should keep me busy for a while.
LMAO. That review is some dumb crap.
Sorry.
Agree. Not just dumb but supercilious. Says more about the reviewer than the reviewed.
He liked it, except he didn't like the graphics, the animation, or the price. Of the first two, I wonder if this is a game where you need a pretty good computer. I don't know if this is the case, but I do have a fairly recent computer with a old, but once hot graphics card, GX8800. I'm not seeing any of the graphics or animation glitches he mentioned. The graphics are not pretty, because this is not a twee game like Aion, but they are quite well done and exactly right for the game, for immersion into it. I wonder if this reviewer is one of those dear souls who mistake pretty for good?
As for the price, it is about what I would expect to pay for a game of this quality and I'm happy to support the years of effort that went into it with my AAA game dollars. The reviewer has a haughty sense that if you're not a big name studio you don't get to make AAA games. Well screw that attitude. This studio worked for years to create this game from the ground up. AAA games have lately become product launches that hit marketing checkmarks in hopes of profiting from WoW's success. FE breaks that mold and I'm very glad it does.
I just posted screen shots of the two.
Probably one of the poorest reviews of a game I have seen in a while. What really got me was complaining about the price when it is standard fare in this industry. That just destroys any credibility that he attempts to make with the review. Any MMOer can tell you it is not the graphics that make the game, it is the gameplay. The graphics in this game are perfectly acceptable to me, not a huge difference from anything else out there.
At least this game has a decent crafting system, unlike the joke that Aion calls crafting. Notice he can compare it with Aion when he is talking about graphics, but does not mention any comparison about the superior crafting.
Hard to tell how well this game will do, like any new game it has issues. Depends how soon they are addressed and whether they can attract the players to play it.
Above is my own post about the graphics quality of this game. I based it on the opening part of the game when you are inside Hoover dam. Once I finished that sequence of the game, and experienced the outside world, I was pretty damn impressed with the overall look of the game. Granted, I have a nice new gaming rig, and my settings are all maxed. None of the screenshots I have seen online really do it justice. No, they're not the most cutting edge graphics out there, but the game is much, much better looking than I thought it was going to be. If you are put off by the screenshots, you may want to check back when there is a free trial so you can see what the game really looks like.
In fact, I have made several negative comments in the Fallen Earth forum on this site about the screenshots I have seen looking too green, brown and gray. In some places this is true, such as the Hoover Dam opening of the game. Outside though, things are much better looking than I would have guessed. The desert sunrise and sunset is beautiful. All in all, I am pleased with it except for the player animations. I think they are very weak, and I hope the devs find time in the future to revisit them.
I don't want to turn this into a full review of the game, but I will say I am enjoying it very much. This is NOT a game for someone who was hoping to jump in and be set on rails toward a goal like you are in most MMO's these days. In fact, you enter and begin playing this game in sort of a "lost" state, which is quite appropriate for the post-apoc setting of the game. Even deciding which way to take your character and how to build it with skills can seem daunting at first. I don't say these things to discourage you, but just to let you know that should you decide to try this game, you have to realize just how different it is from the typical MMO experience. I didn't realize how indoctrinated I had become in the 'easy-button' game play of MMO's in recent years. When I first jumped into this game it really threw me for a loop.
I'm a huge advocate of open-ended skill-based games, and even I was taken aback by wrapping my head around the skills system. I still have more to learn. It's more of a challenge then we are used to these days. I actually welcome it, and some of you may too. I hope the devs continue to evolve and improve this game. They could have an EVE-style winner here if they do.
First:
This seriously looks like a combo of Half-Life 2 and Fallout 3 knit together into an MMO, which is freaking awesome if you ask me! Also happy to see a non target locking system thrown in there, kind of like Age of Conan, making it an MMOFPS with RPG added in, been waiting to see a really good one for a while. DON'T DISAPPOINT!
Second:
I'd love to trial this game, but i haven't seen an option for that...