Harebrained Schemes General Discussion Thread

[Crooked Bee]

HBS' Shadowrun games are terrible with their simplistic systems and wannabe-bioware writing, so "it was never an incline" it is.

Still looking forward to BattleTech though.

 

[Jaesun]

The thing is, just looking at the previous HBS games, what they DID do with Shadowrun was some actual incline from them. However our standards are a bit higher. If you were expecting some incredibly elaborate PnP tactical game, such as ToEE, you have incredibly unreal expectations from a company that makes casual mobile games...

 

[The Avatar]

Say what you will about Hong Kong's failed expectations. Even if it's not as good as Dragonfall, the characters and plot are still better crafted than it's contemporaries(I'm looking at you, PoE).
And it still has that nice evocative mood/theme, and cool music to boot. Thumbs up.

 

[Infinitron]

Just got emailed this "Harebrained Report". Emails are the new Kickstarter updates.

We’ve been busy little bunnies here at the studio and we thought that

this was a great time to tell you about all things Harebrained.

There’s a lot...
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Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

on Sale Now for 50% Off on Steam and GOG!

After our wildly successful Kickstarter just over a year ago, we released Shadowrun: Hong Kong to incredibly positive reviews. Today, we’re excited to release the Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition as a FREE upgrade to all existing owners of Shadowrun: Hong Kong and a FREE bonus to new players. This Extended Edition is the definitive version of the game, and we think it’s pretty sweet.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition adds our final Kickstarter funding goal to the game - an all-new, 6+ hour Shadows of Hong Kong Bonus Campaign. We’ve also included 100+ minutes of Developers Audio Commentary where you’ll hear more about character motivations, the different choices you had in the game, and perhaps even some Easter Eggs you may have missed. It was really fun to record! Here’s a quick taste of the audio commentary.

Again, everyone who Kickstarted Shadowrun: Hong Kong, or already purchased the game will receive the the Shadows of Hong Kong as a FREE upgrade and it is also included as a FREE bonus to new players. The Extended Edition is on sale at 50% off for a limited time on Steam and GOG so now is a great time to pick it up!

And if you know anyone that hasn’t played any of our Shadowrun titles yet (seriously?), the Shadowrun Triple Pack is ALSO 50% off on Steam for a limited time.

_______________________________________________

Necropolis’ Now Available for Pre-Sale On Steam

Includes Original Soundtrack by Shadowrun Composer Jon Everist

NECROPOLIS is an quite a departure from the story-based cRPGs we created for the Shadowrun Universe. It’s a third-person dungeon delve filled with intense action, off-kilter humor, diabolical traps. Necropolis is also a roguelike — a “procedural death labyrinth” — filled with an ever-changing assortment of bizarre rooms, cool weapons, tasty treasure, and nasty monsters designed to slaughter you. Then you can start all over again to see how much further you get.

You play as a nameless adventurer attempting to escape a living, magical dungeon that reconstructs itself each time you play and offers only one way out - down. Craft, explore, equip and advance to stay ahead of the curve as you travel deeper and face greater threats. Find the exit, or die trying.*

We’re really excited to be so close to launch day in March on Steam. HBS demoed the game at PAX East and PAX Prime last year and the response to the minimalist art style and gameplay was pretty amazing. AND - we just announced that the game will feature Death with Friends - co-op network multiplayer where up to 4 players can and cover each other’s backs as the dungeon tries to eat them, (and anything else it can get its maw on) alive.

The game releases on March 17 but, if you pre-order Necropolis on Steam now, you’ll also get the original soundtrack by award-winning Shadowrun composer Jon Everist for free!

*SPOILER: You'll probably die trying.
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BATTLETECH Development Moves Full Steam Ahead

With the scope of the BATTLETECH game now clearly established, the team has been able to really hone in on the core of what we’re making, and to start planning out the experience as a whole. This includes laying out the initial design foundation and creating a strong architectural framework for our codebase.

We’ve also been making good progress on our story for the game which will be set in a small region of the Periphery on the Rimward side of the Inner Sphere. And, finally, our concept art team has switched gears from concept illustrations to actually prototyping the 3D portrait creation system, an Emblem Creator for your Mercenary outfit, and a flexible framework for the cosmetic customization of your ‘Mechs. You can read more details about all of these developments in our End of Year Dev Update.

While the development team is hard at work, our community team has been working on setting up the Comstar: the Global Battletech Community Forum to give both new and old Battletech fans a place to talk about all things Battletech. Mitch is in our Ask the Dev sub-forum all the time answering questions and it’s been great seeing a community forming there. We encourage you to head over to check it out.

For those of you that participated in the BATTLETECH Kickstarter, you’ll remember that Backers earned a Battletech “Beardstream” where our illustrious BATTLETECH leaders (Jordan, Mike and Mitch) will go head-to-head playing a Battletech tabletop game with Randall Bills, Loren Coleman and Brent Evans from Catalyst Game Labs. The losing team will lose their beards - Six Beards Enter Will Enter But Only Three Beards Will Leave! We’ll have more details soon.
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Keeping In Touch

Over the last few months, we’ve been thinking a lot about how to stay in touch with you, hence this first Harebrained Report. We also had a really great time doing our livestreamed Q&A sessions on Twitch during the BATTLETECH Kickstarter and our first Periscope livestream a few weeks ago - that was a blast.

You can expect to see more of that kind of thing coming up soon and we hope you’ll tune in! You never know what’ll happen when Harebrained goes live...

That’s all for now. Take care!

 

[Roguey]

the characters and plot are still better crafted than it's contemporaries(I'm looking at you, PoE).

Sounds like something a Bioware-fan-(in-denial) would say

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The whole of nu-Shadowrun is popamole gargabe that needs to die in fire. Simple games for simple people who need to validate their own fragile egos by reading endless pages of vomit that passes for writing in these games.

 

[DeepOcean]

The whole of nu-Shadowrun is popamole gargabe that needs to die in fire. Simple games for simple people who need to validate their own fragile egos by reading endless pages of vomit that passes for writing in these games.

Not different from other nu-RPGs.

 

[orcinator]

People are too harsh on Hong Kong when DF had most of the same flaws.

People are too easy on DF when it had most of the flaws of DMS.

 

[Roguey]

It was noticeably improved in some areas, whereas it seems as though HK was a stagnation in some, a step back in others, and didn't make anything better.

 

[J_C]

The whole of nu-Shadowrun is popamole gargabe that needs to die in fire. Simple games for simple people who need to validate their own fragile egos by reading endless pages of vomit that passes for writing in these games.

Watch out, you might cut yourself with all that edge.

 

[Infinitron]

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is clearly a writer's game, whereas Dragonfall feels like it was made with interesting tactical scenarios in mind first. A consequence, perhaps, of Mike McCain not being around during the project's early development.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...5-release-on-august-20th.101548/#post-4038380

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The whole of nu-Shadowrun is popamole gargabe that needs to die in fire. Simple games for simple people who need to validate their own fragile egos by reading endless pages of vomit that passes for writing in these games.

Not different from other nu-RPGs.

Not even close.

 

[Archibald]

Can someone provide some examples of these tactical scenarios in Dragonfall? It is mentioned pretty often, but personally I don't see it since 99% of fights for me boiled down to: get to the cover -> keep shooting till everyone is dead. Difficulty setting just makes things longer and not really more challenging or harder.

Haven't played Hong Kong and I have no intentions to do that after reading multiple posts here how its even more wordy and didn't improve gameplay much if at all.

 

[Infinitron]

Can someone provide some examples of these tactical scenarios in Dragonfall? It is mentioned pretty often, but personally I don't see it since 99% of fights for me boiled down to: get to the cover -> keep shooting till everyone is dead. Difficulty setting just makes things longer and not really more challenging or harder.

By "tactical scenarios" I don't mean EXTREEM HARDCORE JAGGED ALLIANCE. What's generally meant by that is that the game's missions all feature set-piece infiltration/exfiltration tactical scenarios, which are exhilarating on a purely storytelling level even if they aren't truly difficult.

Breaking out of a corporate headquarters with a Cyberzombie Troll and mowing through Knights Errant in turn-based combat is a cool scenario. It doesn't matter that it's easy, it's still cool. And it's the kind of scenario that Shadowrun: Hong Kong's missions offer less of.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey Ultimate seal of approval: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...06905&pagenumber=733&perpage=40#post456176469

 

[almondblight]

Can someone provide some examples of these tactical scenarios in Dragonfall? It is mentioned pretty often, but personally I don't see it since 99% of fights for me boiled down to: get to the cover -> keep shooting till everyone is dead. Difficulty setting just makes things longer and not really more challenging or harder.

For example, I thought the final fight of Blitz's mission was pretty interesting, and it took me a few tries (and a few different tactics) to beat it. One thing that helped was that the matrix battle wasn't obvious at first; you're not really sure how much time you should spend on the turrets (which are firing at your meatspace friends) vs. how much time you should spend on the enemy decker, or the best approach to taking out the enemy decker (throw everything at him at once, distract him by turning the turrets, etc.).

Another one that's memorable is the Apex fight, because of how you needed to divide up your team an manage your resources (so you don't blow threw everything on the first couple of waves). Enemy weapons like the stun gun made it more interesting (if one character is by themselves and gets hit by one, they're most likely going to die).

Maybe not the best RPG combat ever, but I'm having a hard time thinking of many RPGs with better combat. Especially if you consider that there's no copy and paste trash mob stuff, and you can't just run out of a mission and heal/resupply. I was rarely just going through the motions (which usually happens a lot with RPG combat).

 

[Roguey]

Roguey Ultimate seal of approval: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...06905&pagenumber=733&perpage=40#post456176469

He played Shadowrun Returns for 3.6 hours, the director's cut for Dragonfall for a little over half-an-hour, and Hong Kong for 2, so it's not an entirely well-informed opinion.

 

[Gregz]

Needs moar Shadowrun, I'm already wanting to play a new campaign.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

HBS' Shadowrun games are terrible with their simplistic systems and wannabe-bioware writing, so "it was never an incline" it is.

This. Seriously.
I really wanted to enjoy SR games but the shitty engine and shallow design philosophy behind EVERYTHING just made it all the more apparent how pointless it is.

The only good things that came out of SR were art, music and occasional dialogues. Everything else was distraction-level garbage.

 

[GameGear]

I used to think this place was a hardcore site for the most elitist RPG gamers around

Then I found out there are people that legitimately think the new Shadowrun games were good

I don't know why you guys have a reputation for being jerks about RPGs, you guys like plenty of bad games

 

[Gregz]

Keep scrounging for those KKKs guys, the edgy shtick never fails!

How many RPGs worth playing are released in a year? 4? 6?

I'd much rather have another Shadowrun than 99% of the crap that's available.

 

[GameGear]

I think what really sealed the deal for me on the mediocre quality of the new Shadowrun games is that the best anyone has done with the editing tools is a really bad remake of the SNES game. I don't like Skyrim, but it's clear a lot of people love it, warts and all, so they put time into making content for it. I don't think anybody actually thinks "I want MORE of that" after playing any of the new Shadowruns. (Well, unless it's regurgitated from HBS themselves.)

Doesn't help that those morons released them as piecemeal titles, splitting up the community and now nobody knows what to do or which game to focus on.

 

[orcinator]

From what I heard the editor is shit and doesn't actually let you mess with the mechanics in any way that would make the game less shallow.

Also it has a zoomed out isometric perspective so nobody wants to make sexy clothes (if they even added the ability to edit the models)

 

[Immortal]

From what I heard the editor is shit and doesn't actually let you mess with the mechanics in any way that would make the game less shallow.

Also it has a zoomed out isometric perspective so nobody wants to make sexy clothes (if they even added the ability to edit the models)

You can import user generated content but it's true that the editor is fairly hamstrung.
It would be really hard to make a shadow run campaign that wasn't as shallow as the OC.

 

[DeepOcean]

I dunno, it is the Codex and all but people give a hard time to HBS. They've been improving steadly, it isn't a case of Bethesda that releases the same bugs for 15 years straight, wish they were more ambitious but I dunno, after you spend years making shitty mobile games you kinda get conservative to not end on that hole again. The combat on the shadowrun games had been slick and enjoyable for me with nice variety (recently did a rerun on HK with a cybermurder no negotiation troll and quite some fights were interesting when you don't press the I WIN charisma option.), sure it has big problems like the one shot per turn thing that cripple the Ai (there is some dude here in the codex, think his name is Agris, that did a mod making the Ai use two APs for two shoots per turn, highly recommended) and the forgiving cooldowns but when it works it brings that "backs toward the wall" feeling that makes you sweat exactly like shadowrun should be.

The expansion is a noticeable incline towards HK and Dragonfall (not on the story department as the expansion ends way too quickly for the story to sink in.), enemies are more spread out and come from multiple directions (not like HK where most fights were very straight popamole affairs) making you sweat a little on some fights, the mass stun + mass rape tactic doesn't work that well as many enemies have magnet arms and that Jolt cyberware that makes them immune to stun.

There aren't many RPGs out there that allow for avoiding most combat content by persuasion skills, on some missions on HK you can totally avoid combat. Sure it has the same problem of AoD of the diplomatic route being mostly selecting the "I WIN" diplomatic solution but that is hardly a crime to the point of making HBS being hacks for falling on the design traps that many RPG developers fall all the time into.

I'm happy they are doing BattleTech and hyped if they get that engine later and make a 3d shadowrun game with destructible walls, different height levels, seamless transition between outside and internal enviroments, vehicles and all that stuff lacking from Shadowrun Returns engine.

Just hope on their next shadowrun game, they fix their cooldown system, it is way too forgiving, the whole thing of losing life if you use a spell out of cooldown could be pretty great on making you having to worry about attrition but that only works if you are really tempted to use spells out of cooldown and that only happens when you are in deep shit what unfortunately doesn't happen on the frequency it should happen, this game has combat more forgiving than NuXCOM and that shouldn't happen. Anyway, as most kickstarters, I get frustrated how some basic concepts must be learned again by developers when they were obvious 20 years ago but it is life, most people don't engage on arcane semi autistic RPG design discussions on a daily basis like we see here on the codex and I dunno if developers are a bit too eager to do instead to think, too confident for their own sakes or just inexperienced but I can see some sparks of talent on Shadowrun games even if the games disappoint a few times it isn't like some abomination like Fallout 4 where talent is something completely alien to modern Bethesda.