New Game???

Z dweller

Well-known member
I'd be very surprised if Disney didn't take the opportunity to follow up to the next movie with some kind of game.

It remains to be seen whether they'll go for a full blown PS/Xbox release, or just a lighter version for smartphones and tablets.

Any of the many gaming gurus here at the Raven want to take a guess?
 

Violet

Moderator Emeritus
I would have guessed Indy mission and figures for the Infinity franchise like Star Wars and Marvel before it however with the news that they're no longer producing any more Infinity I'm actually sad that we won't be getting that.

I would imagine something along the lines of previously where a game actually gets released on the newer gen of consoles properly this time. And with the game publishing also being dumped by Disney expect third party. I would imagine a mobile gaming variant also happening.
 

EvilDevo

Member
Yeah, an infinity figure would have been nice. Hoping some developers start pitching projects/ideas to Disney now that they no longer make games themselves. (If that's how it works.)

An indie Indy sidescroller anyone? ;)
Or a Hennig/Visceral collaboration. :whip:
 

IAdventurer01

Well-known member
If they decide to release a halfway decent title and not some quick mobile garbage, it'll be interesting to see who they dump it off on. They already dumped Star Wars on EA, but might they try a studio that has some experience in Indy clones, such as Square?

Preferably, it'll be some smaller studio with some great new ideas that really want to sink their teeth into this, but that's a pipe-dream.
 

TheFedora

Active member
IAdventurer01 said:
If they decide to release a halfway decent title and not some quick mobile garbage, it'll be interesting to see who they dump it off on. They already dumped Star Wars on EA, but might they try a studio that has some experience in Indy clones, such as Square?

Preferably, it'll be some smaller studio with some great new ideas that really want to sink their teeth into this, but that's a pipe-dream.

I'd like to see Naughty Dog take on an Indy game with their brilliant work on Uncharted. Loved Uncharted 4, so many mechanics Id like to see in an Indiana Jones game. So many areas I saw where Indy mechanics could easily be implemented.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
TheFedora said:
I'd like to see Naughty Dog take on an Indy game with their brilliant work on Uncharted. Loved Uncharted 4, so many mechanics Id like to see in an Indiana Jones game. So many areas I saw where Indy mechanics could easily be implemented.

Just for the heck of it, what do you think the difference would be between Uncharted and a good Indiana Jones game? Less gunplay, certainly; perhaps more emphasis on hand-to-hand combat?
 

TheFedora

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Just for the heck of it, what do you think the difference would be between Uncharted and a good Indiana Jones game? Less gunplay, certainly; perhaps more emphasis on hand-to-hand combat?

In Uncharted 4, I really liked all the changes to hand to hand combat they made. Uncharted's hand to hand combat is really unique but I think in this most recent game its really gotten better. The game gives you dodge options and allows for takedowns if you can manage to stealth an enemy. There are sections you can get halfway through or most of the way through without firing a single shot if you are good enough at stealth/hand to hand.

I really liked the new grappling hook mechanic in Uncharted 4...I can see that being implemented in an Indy game. Using it both to swing to new areas but also for attack. (In Uncharted 4, if Nathan Drake is swinging over an enemy, a prompt appears which allows you to do an aerial takedown on them) Something like that would be cool to see implemented. Also whip mechanics...I am thinking something similar to how the whip was implemented for Catwoman in Arkham City. You can use it to attack, but also to disarm opponents.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
As a video game connoisseur, I must say that over the last two or three years, the production values of so-called AAA titles seem to have gone up a lot. Games like the Batman Arkham series and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor have shown that even releases based on licensed material don't have to be lackluster experiences.

The biggest reason of course is the technology that ever marches on. That alone helps set the bar higher than ever. Many features that were truly jaw-dropping five years ago have become something gamers take as granted for every new release.

So, if there's going to be a new Indy game, its developers must certainly put some actual work on it to clear the bar. The time when one could quickly mash together a simple third-person action game, with uninspired features, and have it loosely follow some movie's plot, seems to be a thing of the past. There's no such thing as making a "quick" buck in today's video game industry, save for deliberately going down the retro road. In fact, Disney canning its own Infinity product is a good example of this.

Even mobile games need to have some original catches and hooks to them - perhaps even more prominently than what is required on the traditional AAA field - because that market is actually the most heavily contested these days.
 

Sea Monarch

New member
Finn said:
So, if there's going to be a new Indy game, its developers must certainly put some actual work on it to clear the bar. The time when one could quickly mash together a simple third-person action game, with uninspired features, and have it loosely follow some movie's plot, seems to be a thing of the past. There's no such thing as making a "quick" buck in today's video game industry, save for deliberately going down the retro road. In fact, Disney canning its own Infinity product is a good example of this.

Even mobile games need to have some original catches and hooks to them - perhaps even more prominently than what is required on the traditional AAA field - because that market is actually the most heavily contested these days.

I hope so. I sincerely hope so. And........ I think you're right. Here's hoping they get the boulder rolling soon! :whip:
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Graphic adventures have become fashionable again, and Fate of Atlantis remains the best Indy game. Alls I'm sayin'.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
Graphic adventures have become fashionable again, and Fate of Atlantis remains the best Indy game. Alls I'm sayin'.

This might be the closest you get for a while.

PathwayTwitter01.gif


Pathway Game said:
A PULP ADVENTURE SCENARIO, HUH? CARE TO ELABORATE?

With pleasure:

The year is 1936.

Ancient, bewildering artefacts are materializing on black markets around the world. Rumours of a new element, which German researchers allude to as Valkyrium-500, are spreading. Hushed voices speak of an elusive “Projekt Walhalla” - the meaning of which remains obscure. Meanwhile, agents of the Reich are reportedly conducting frantic excavations around the globe.

However, these puzzling artefacts also managed to draw the attention of wealthy private collectors. As the owner of Lankford & Co, a specialised business known for recovering unique items quickly and discreetly, you welcome this.

Your responsibility is to uncover the remains of a lost civilisation, before the Germans get to it. How exactly you go about this, is up to you and your thrown-together band of eccentric adventurers!

They don't have a lot of information up yet,but the game's site can be found here.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Udvarnoky said:
Graphic adventures have become fashionable again, and Fate of Atlantis remains the best Indy game. Alls I'm sayin'.
Well, we've already got a remastered HD version of Monkey Island 1 & 2 + Day of the Tentacle, and there's a Full Throttle one in the works. So, if not a *new* game per se, perhaps...

Indy's licensing properties won't perhaps make FoA as clear-cut a case, but boy the prospect of it alone is mouth-watering.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Tim Schafer has said that after finishing up the Full Throttle remaster, he doesn't intend to pursue the others, because that finishes off the LEC games he was project leader on. He expressed that he believes the other LEC vets should handle the remasters for their games, but I'm a bit dubious anything will happen, because Double Fine is the studio with the Sony connections that made their dialog with Disney possible. Unless Tim intends to get that ball rolling on behalf of people like Hal Barwood, I'm not holding my breath.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, I'm fully aware of that, it's the very thing I referred to with those licensing properties. FoA is a LEC game made with SCUMM engine, but that's where its similarities with those other games being remastered end. So we may never see it getting the same treatment.

But I'd be totally doing cartwheels if it came to be.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I don't know that the Indy trademark makes a Fate of Atlantis remaster any different logistically than say, Sam & Max Hit the Road or The Dig. Sounds like for Schafer it's a matter of principle. Though I think it's somewhat of a dopey principle, since the Double Fine remakes have been so faithful and tastefully done.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Here's an article on the future of <I>Star Wars</I> in video games, which could shed some light on directions they'd explore for Indy in the future, as in these paragraphs:

In 2018, EA will publish a third-person Star Wars action-adventure created by Dead Space developer Visceral. Amy Hennig, who cocreated the Uncharted series (which is celebrated for its cinematic qualities), is leading the project, about which we know nothing aside from an extremely brief early look and the fact that it will feature an ensemble cast with multiple story arcs. Another third-person action-adventure from Titanfall developer Respawn, set in a different, unspecified timeline, will follow in 2019.
[...]
Although McCully acknowledges the need to ?navigate the film releases,? committing to telling original stories simplifies that task, while also satisfying fans? insatiable appetite for more Star Wars. ?You don?t necessarily want to retell the story of this character and make a movie game that traces the steps of Luke Skywalker,? he says. ?I know Luke Skywalker?s story. I want to know a new story about another character or a character that I control.?

Amy Henning working on a LucasFilm licensed game? I'd be happy to have that happen twice. That second paragraph? Well, they've never been perfect analogies for each other, in terms of number of characters, but they're also different types of stories; telling a story about one of Indy's adventures isn't the same as showing some Luke adventure we didn't know about before.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Amy Henning working on a LucasFilm licensed game? I'd be happy to have that happen twice. That second paragraph? Well, they've never been perfect analogies for each other, in terms of number of characters, but they're also different types of stories; telling a story about one of Indy's adventures isn't the same as showing some Luke adventure we didn't know about before.

I was thinking about this earlier today. In 2006 we saw the tech demo of what was then next generation systems for an Indiana Jones featuring the Euphoria Engine. The same year at E3 we saw the first trailer for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

Drake's Fortune released in 2007, and Indiana Jones disappeared into the ether. A decade on and we're on the verge of the fifth mainline entry in the Uncharted series and sixth game overall. Despite words to the contrary, it's doubtful that it'll be in mothballs for very long.

And Indiana Jones? Nowhere to be found. The official word from LucasArts was resources had to be taken from that project and reassigned to getting The Force Unleashed out the door. The unofficial word: Lucasfilm President Micheline Chau saw it and ordered Jim Ward to kill the project. Why? Nobody is certain, but it's strongly believed that it lacked even a basic direction. They had a staff, a character, and tech but didn't know what to do with it.(?!)

It's rather amazing to think about. Indiana Jones for many people is shorthand for a genre; a genre that has now been cornered by both Lara Croft and Nathan Drake. Indiana Jones might as well been left buried the Well of Souls. He's effectively useless.

Add my vote for Amy Hennig being given a free hand with Indiana Jones.

tenor.gif


It's not that complicated!
 

dprog

Active member
Le Saboteur said:
And Indiana Jones? Nowhere to be found. The official word from LucasArts was resources had to be taken from that project and reassigned to getting The Force Unleashed out the door. The unofficial word: Lucasfilm President Micheline Chau saw it and ordered Jim Ward to kill the project. Why? Nobody is certain, but it's strongly believed that it lacked even a basic direction. They had a staff, a character, and tech but didn't know what to do with it.(?!)

Add my vote for Amy Hennig being given a free hand with Indiana Jones.

tenor.gif


It's not that complicated!
I think that they wanted to turn that game into a COOP player game.From a gameinformer article(Fall Of The Empire: How Inner Turmoil Brought Down LucasArts):

?It would be the type of thing where a team would show a build and [Ward] would say something like, ?Alright, [Quality Assurance], based on the playthroughs what are we rating this right now?? And it would be a 22-year-old QA person who showed up late and was sitting at the table that answered. He would say something like, ?84,? and Jim would say, ?That?s not good enough. What gets this game to a 90?? QA would nervously say, ?Oh, adding online co-op,? which is not at all in the schedule or budget, and Jim would say, ?Let?s look into that.? The dev team wouldn?t know how to respond to that. That addition wasn?t in the books. We became this forum for democratization, but nobody really had any idea of what was going on. At the same time, nobody wanted to tell the truth, because they didn?t want Jim to lose it and fire a water bottle across the room.?

I'm Still Amazed by this fact that LA Management thought it was a Good Idea to make 2 Tech Demo Games With Similar Selling Points(Euphoria) instead of making 1 and turn the other into a Game with great gameplay.

Even Today Barely anyone Uses Euphoria in their games, because it's like a Double Edged Sword.(it has even backfired badly on rockstar for Max Payne 3 that couldn't meet it's sales expectation)
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Amy Henning working on a LucasFilm licensed game? I'd be happy to have that happen twice.

Nope. You're still going to be waiting on that first game.

While all of this can be couched under "EA screwed the project" that's a second high profile misfire. It's going to be hard to convince the sharp pencil boys to fork over a bunch of cash for a big budget Indiana Jones game with her name attached.

It doesn't help that single player games are on life support either. If you ever suffered under the belief that video games were art, let this assuage you of that notion.

Games as services and Loot Boxes are here to stay.
 
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