We’ve made great progress with the playable environments over the past couple years, refining some of the original ones and adding new ones but not much had happened with the starting town until recently.
As long-time followers of the project will recall, the starting “town” is a small survivor enclave set within the ruined walls of the Burrwitch Prison, situated on a rocky outcropping between two rivers called Devil’s Crossing. For a long time, we had an exterior wall but the inside was sort of an amatuer-hour collection of mismatched floors and walls from the house set, plus other random assets jammed together to make a stand-in prison interior.
At long last though, the prison has gotten some attention in our efforts to prepare the beginning segment of the game for alpha (don’t your breath yet, it is still months away but we’re getting closer ).
We still need to populate with NPCs and some additional vendor type stands will be going like, like a blacksmith, but you can see the basic structure is in place and looking not too shabby… well, uhh… actually I guess it is pretty shabby looking but it’s supposed to be, I mean, it is a ruined prison after all. The next phase will be adding refugees and quest-giving NPCs to populate the cells and interior courtyard.
It looks great, the only downside (aside of the lack of booze) is the prison bares (bare not bar!). Since they are all the same and repeat so often in a row, it looks weird.
Prisons aren’t weird. They are in long rows, repeating themselves and looking bare. Only comment I have is that the cells are a bit large and probably meant for groups instead of 2-3 people.
Yeah, the cells are larger than you’d typically expect but we decided to make them more like group cells since that worked better for gameplay / visibility in terms of being able to turn them into small rooms with refugees huddled together. Originally we had smaller cells but you couldn’t fit much of interest in them.
Sweet, this looks nice and post-apocalypticy! So I’m guessing those are just the common holding cells, like where you’d throw the drunks to sleep it off for the night or the disorderlies who roused some rabble over the new tax hikes on beer, right? Well, I mean before everything went to Hades in a handbasket.
Ah! Looks quite homey actually. Cozy.
Good to know you’ll have this place to return to when you’re out on your own exploring the cold dark places of the world.
Are comments along the lines of I keep throwing money at my screen but nothing is happening getting long in the tooth or do you still like to hear that?
Speaking of which will you always be returning here or does the game progress to new areas in much the same way that progression in Titan Quest worked or will this area change and improve as you aid the people staying there?
You’ll be returning here throughout the game but you’ll also find other survivor enclaves with new quest-lines. In TQ you often just ran through a town and never looked back or returned 1-2 times to complete quests / use the merchants but generally just kept moving on. I think that lessened the extent to which players formed any attachment or nostalgia for a town. We also invested a ton of resources in creating all the different towns for what I see as a relatively small pay-off in terms of the value they added to gameplay.
In Grim Dawn, we hope to have smaller, more frequently revisited and memorable towns while also investing a greater portion of our limited resources to creating gameplay spaces.
Also, yes, we’re planning some visual changes for the town.
that looks bloody fantastic, and nice to know that the alpha is getting closer, still annoying that its some months away, but at least its coming a bit closer, and that places looks really good
plus it will get repaired right? as you progress through the game? so that areas will be rebuilt? I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hyped for this game, can’t wait
Remarkable, you guys are the texture grandmaster.
Compared to other recent arpg games, they look “washed out”.
GD looks very polished from that screenshot, the waiting is killing us
Anyway looks great! Will the town change shape as the story progresses and as you complete questline? I feel like this has been answered before but can’t really remember…If I were Eisprinzessin I could just search for it but I can’t do magix.
).
The next phase will be adding refugees and quest-giving NPCs to populate the cells and interior courtyard.
Can’t wait to get in and explore myself.