Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[thesoup]

Ever-Faithful as Archbishop Lazarus, Scraper as The Butcher, Goliath as King Leoric and Memorious as Deckard Cain.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Mark Yohalem, Primordia: Origins Creative Manager, said in an interview with IGN: "We are happy we can finally set out to make Primordia exactly what we wanted from the beginning. In Origins, Horatio will embark on an epic journey of conquest, to embrace his former self and crush Metropol with his twin lazer cannons. Previously we didn't have the technology to do all that, but now that we've signed a publishing deal with Electronic Arts, we can finally use the Unreal Engine 3 - most fans will no doubt squee with joy now because UE3 is known for its gritty and metallic look that will fit Primordia spectacularly. That doesn't mean, however, that we are completely ditching our roots, no way. We are, in fact, trying to innovate a bit, and brainstormed to come up with a 'tag' that would fit our game well, and devised the revolutionary "Action Adventure" genre. Primordia: Origins retains the heavy moral choices of the original Primordia (do I save the humans or do I gas them with my twin plasma lasers?), as well as some of the non-combat adventure game elements (quick time events, etc). So stay tuned, you b'sodding rascals, for Primordia: Origins will be coming soon to Xbox One (TM), Sony (TM) PS4 (TM) and Nintendo (TM) Wii (TM)!"

 

[MRY]

The last part of "Fallen" is up here: http://www.primordiagame.com/Fallen_Part_3.pdf

The whole thing is available as a PDF here: http://www.primordiagame.com/Fallen_Complete.pdf

And as a RARed ePub here: http://www.primordiagame.com/Fallen_Complete.rar

For some reason, the ePub is obscenely large (330 MB) while the RAR is small (3 MB). I have no idea; I don't do e-books myself, this is just because people asked for one.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

A very nice conclusion to the story! Maybe you could put an easter egg on the terminal in a next patch for Primordia with some text about Autonomous 8?

 

[Kirtai]

Very nice, I like it

For some reason, the ePub is obscenely large (330 MB) while the RAR is small (3 MB). I have no idea; I don't do e-books myself, this is just because people asked for one.

The ePub has a fuckton of identical background images in it, nearly 200 per page. It looks like you converted it from the PDF and PDFs usually convert really badly. (A problem with PDF, not ePub). Since it looks like the backgrounds are the problem it should be readily fixable though.

Incidentally, ePub is mostly just specially wrapped xhtml 1.1 & CSS 2.0 with a few other bits

 

[MRY]

@ Yaar -- Thanks! But A8 doesn't exist at the time of Primordia. Despite the WEG press release, Fallen takes place after, not before, the game.

@ Kirtai -- Yeah, I saw that when I loaded the ePub in Winzip, but damned if I know how to do anything about it. I'll fuss around and try going straight from Word DOC to ePub. [EDIT: Nope, doesn't seem possible. Any ideas?]

 

[Aeschylus]

@ Kirtai -- Yeah, I saw that when I loaded the ePub in Winzip, but damned if I know how to do anything about it. I'll fuss around and try going straight from Word DOC to ePub.

You might try the program Calibre -- it does a pretty good job of converting various ebook formats with minimal bloat.

 

[Kirtai]

@ Kirtai -- Yeah, I saw that when I loaded the ePub in Winzip, but damned if I know how to do anything about it. I'll fuss around and try going straight from Word DOC to ePub. [EDIT: Nope, doesn't seem possible. Any ideas?]

I believe the latest version (i.e. 0.9.34 - five days ago) of Calibre can directly convert DOCX files produced by Word. It's still very new but Calibre is released weekly (on fridays) so fixes should be incoming for any problems.

From the most recent release announcement:

Conversion of Microsoft Word documents (.docx files generated by Word 2007 or newer)
DOCX files created with Microsoft Word 2007 or newer can now be converted by calibre. The converter has support for lists, tables, images, all types of text formatting, footnotes, endnotes and even dropcaps. A sample docx file showing the capabilities of the converter is available: http://calibre-ebook.com/downloads/demos/demo.docx Note that this code is still very new, so there are more than likely a few bugs waiting to be squashed.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Despite the WEG press release, Fallen takes place after, not before, the game.

Thanks for clearing this up!

 

[CappenVarra]

They were taken. Recycled. Repurposed. Destroyed.

 

[MRY]

I believe the latest version (i.e. 0.9.34 - five days ago) of Calibre can directly convert DOCX files produced by Word. It's still very new but Calibre is released weekly (on fridays) so fixes should be incoming for any problems.

Sounds like first step is to do DOC -> DOCX then. Thanks!

 

[Cowboy Moment]

So yeah bros, let it be known far and wide that I am not a big "classical adventure" fan. Suffering from a toxic combination of a lack of patience and chronic inability to pixel hunt, few are the classical adventures that I've completed without a walkthrough (somewhat amusingly, Flight of the Amazon Queen is among then, I was about 12 back then, and possibly smarter). Gabriel Knight, the Indiana Jones games, Prisoner of Ice, Monkey Island - all too difficult for this popamoler. Although I managed, and absolutely loved The Last Express, but that is a bit of a different thing.

Anyway, I am talking about this, because apparently Primordia was criticized for having difficult puzzles, and let me tell you, if I can finish the game without ever getting stuck for more than ~15 minutes (because I didn't notice Scraper's arm in the rubble, and also didn't notice that you could walk outside the ship to where the rag is initially), then they're not hard puzzles.

Game is great, very well-written, VA is superior to most AAA productions imo, art is beautiful, and there's a good amount of well thought out thematic consistency. Especially liked how a lot of the game is basically about abandonment, especially creators abandoning their creations to a purposeless existence, and how that can be dealt with. To that end, I would've liked an ending where Horatio dies, and Crispin lives to continue working on the ship, but one can't have everything.

Anyway, major kudos to MRY and the gang, bought Gemini Rue just now, and if it's even close to as good as Primordia, then you have my preorder potatoes for your next big thing - what is that going to be, anyway?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Gemini Rue wasn't developed by the same folks, though

Primordia is Wormwood's first game. You got fooled by teh marketing campaigns, brah

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Gemini Rue wasn't developed by the same folks, though

Primordia is Wormwood's first game. You got fooled by teh marketing campaigns, brah

So it's like one of those weird things, where Wadjet-Eye develops adventure games, but also publishes them?

Anyway, Gemini Rue is supposed to be good, and it would have to be really bad for me to regret 5 Potatoes on a GoG sale. Still curious if Wormwood are up to anything else these days, though. Was the game successful enough to merit further productions?

Btw. that's some pretty thorough marketing, given that upon enabling commentary mode in Primordia, the first person you see is the CEO of WEG, listed as "Producer".

 

[MRY]

Thanks for the kind words! As for the commentary -- that's what happens when WEG says they'll handle implementing the commentary, I suppose. You can imagine our surprise.

Gemini Rue got far more positive reviews than Primordia from mainstream (and even adventure-game) sites and sold at least an order of magnitude more copies. So, just based on pure odds, you should like it more. But it's a really, really different game. The puzzles are extremely simple, even compared to Primordia's (which, as you note, aren't that tough), there is little inventory management, and there are Rise of the Dragon-style action sequences.

I was unable to enjoy it because, to my idiosyncratic tastes, it had a toxic combination of adolescent "edginess" (the game's main protagonist is a hardbitten, trench-coat-wearing ex-mercenary named Azriel Odin, whose partner is named Kain) and severe disjunction between the character, the player, and puzzles: within the first few minutes of the game, the aforementioned Azriel Odin, though armed with a gun, has to kowtow to a teenage doorman to get into a building, then cowers and hides from two two-bit thugs rather than ambushing them (to kill them or to question them), despite (1) being in a dark room that they are entering from a bright hallway; (2) knowing they're coming while they're expecting an unarmed civilian; (3) having ample cover. Surely I can't have been the only person whose first inclination was to shoot the thugs through the door, and -- failing that -- to hide and wait for a shoot out. But the game would not oblige either path. You had to sneak out and cower on a ledge outside the room until they left. And if they see you, I believe they just shoot you while you stand there.

People (including Primordia's coder) rave about the game, so I suspect I either didn't give it enough of a chance or am just in the wrong demographic. But to me, if you're going to offer the fantasy of being the tough-guy I might've wanted to be if I had been an anime fan at age 13, at least let me be that character! If you want me to be a fiddly puzzle-solver, then make me play as a reclusive robot or something. . . .

Resonance -- another game WEG published but did not develop -- is pretty good. I think it has a few problems of the same sort (the maverick cop was unable to do anything particularly maverick coppy when I wanted him to) and a few different problems of its own (there are some interface systems that are clever, but frustratingly slow moving), but I thought there was a lot that's impressive about it. From the standpoint of polish, it's undeniably better than Primordia. All the scenes are much better timed, executed, animated; the dialogue is probably a bit punchier and the voice acting seems like it went through a few more passes than Primordia's did. The puzzles are generally better, though perhaps a bit less thematic. Ultimately, I didn't find the plot that engaging (when is Dick Cheney going to stop being the behind-the-scenes villain in every terrorism plot?), but most people did, including people who were big Primordia fans.

 

[tuluse]

I think Azriel was supposed to be a Noir style detective. Yes, he wears a trenchcoat and is kind of a badass, but he doesn't murder willy-nilly, and wasn't there some explanation about not wanting to have a gang after him, plus there are theoretically cops around who would probably not appreciate murders.

 

[MRY]

I'm sure you're right (although letting yourself be killed to avoid annoying local cops seem like an excessively generous strategy).

Oh, and as for Cowboy Moment's question: I wouldn't say that Primordia was successful enough to finance a future project, but there are nevertheless projects in the works. Vic, the artist, is spearheading another point-and-click adventure game. Most of my energy is going to a game that's sort of Weird World meets King of Dragon Pass (not unlike, incidentally, the "roguelike diplomacy" thead in the Workshop forum). I've also got another project I'm mulling that's basically Oregon Trail meets with Realms of Arkania travel system. Much less progress on that one, but for various reasons it appeals to me.

I'm hoping we'll have something to show people soon-ish.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

And meanwhile, Double Fine gets 3 million because "nobody makes classic adventure games anymore!", then proceeds to go overbudget while outputting rather subpar material. Sigh. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the "classic adventure fans" out there were more in love with the idea of such a game, rather than the game itself. Wonder how their launch is going to go...

Oh well, in any case, you have the attention of this potato dweller (seriously though, Oregon Trail, of all things?).

 

[MRY]

Incidentally, I should add: as annoying as it is that the two people routinely associated with Primordia in reviews are Dave and Logan, the fact is that we probably benefited significantly in sales by the fact that people wrongly believed (1) that WEG made Gemini Rue and Resonance and (2) that WEG made Primordia. (Reviews routinely described the game as being made by the people who made Gemini Rue.) That and the association with Bastion probably accounted for half our sales.

As for Oregon Trail -- in a sense, there's not much difference between OT and RoA travel, but the main things I'm thinking of are: (1) the journey itself is the point of the game; (2) some of the managerial aspects are fun in and of themselves (e.g., hunting); (3) resource management (balancing speed, supplies, and health). These seem a bit different from RoA, and they're part of what I have in mind.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

MRY, I must say that I have enjoyed Primordia more than either Resonance or Gemini Rue. Both of those games are fun, but only Primordia got that organic feel. All of its parts just fit well together. Maybe my perceptions are influenced by the sci-fi setting though, but I do think that this is best adventure game I've played last year.

Gun fights in GR were terrible - I hate action elements in my point&clicks. If I want action I play action games, where doing actiony stuff is actually enjoyable. I think that the whole game would be better without this element.

Resonance is very nice, but maybe a bit over the top and too political sometimes. It doesn't change the fact that I do recommend this game to any adventure gamer.

Anyway, I do hope to see more from Wormwood studios in the near future!

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Incidentally, it's amusing how republican the political allegory of Metromind's rise to power is. Especially since the corruption begins with the removal of Steeple, ostensibly a religious figure. A wonder that no progressive reviewer got butthurt about it, but I guess it just flew right over their heads.

Now that I think about it though, Primordia is pretty ableist as well. No wonder MRY posts on the Codex.

 

[jfrisby]

Gun fights in GR were terrible - I hate action elements in my point&clicks. If I want action I play action games, where doing actiony stuff is actually enjoyable. I think that the whole game would be better without this element.

I sort of took those GR fights as a knowing riff on the annoying mini-games in a lot of classic adventures (the Space Quest skimmer/Skate-o-Rama comes to mind.. but there's piles of them) -- sudden, out of place, action mechanics are a bit of a trademark of the genre. The Gamma/flashing monitors thing is probably the closest thing in Primordia, but was still a "oh... I have a pay attention!" moment.

Sad to hear you're not making another adventure immediately, MRY!

 

[MRY]

@ Cowboy Moment -- I like to think the politics of Primordia are a bit more complicated than that, and indeed one of the game's biggest supporters is an outright pro-Stalin neo-Communist, but I do think, at a minimum, the game is not overtly anti-conversative, which I suppose makes it de facto conservative given when compared to, say, Bioshock or Deus Ex or whatever.

Also, several reviewers did expressly complain about the game's apparent politics. For example:

Horatio largely seems to be one of the few robots in the game who actually believes in this quasi-religious narrative, but it definitely draws interesting – though potentially irrelevant – parallels to modern issues of an increasingly secular society. Even as someone who isn’t particularly religious, I felt a bit uneasy at the persecution Horatio experiences as a Humanist in an otherwise progressive world. But I felt more uneasy about certain narrative details in the game which definitely had some leanings of the maligned Religious Right. Regardless of what I’d consider some pretty explicit (and misinformed) political messages, the story by-itself is interesting and compelling.

It got some mention in Tweets and whatnot, too. For example:

"Primordia" was a pretty good game, even if it was obviously a conservative's tale where "Progress" was evil and Man (God) was great.

https://twitter.com/iamfantastikate/status/318918363709591552

The weird thing is, other people perceived the game as critical of religion. So there you go. I do wonder if hostility toward the game's perceived politics fueled some of the negativity in the reviews, although that seems like a cop-out on my part. There's plenty to criticize about the game, so it's not unreasonable to rate it down.

@ jfrisby -- Well, Vic was the one whose vision shaped the atmosphere of Primordia, who conceived its broad contours (the journey from the desert to the city), and who brought it to life with his art. And he is working on an adventure right now. I'll probably help him out with the writing.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

MRY, when I say republican, I don't mean the silly :patriot: idea of what that entails, but rather classical republicanism, or civic humanism. A republican sees the state as a caretaker of certain values - chief among them the value of the res publica, the common good, but also others like civic virtue and positive liberty. This is in opposition to some liberal, and more notably libertarian stances, that posit that the state should be ideologically neutral, and even that the government should be seen as a service provided to its citizens, and nothing else.

What I saw in Primordia's description of the events in Metropol, is an argument that the latter position leads to tyranny more often than not. If the state is a service, then it's only defining metric is efficiency, and this is exactly what Metromind claims to be aiming for. Even after her unpleasant personality core is disabled, this does not change - she just claims she's going to do it better now. If you remove all values from the government (which is what I take the removal of Steeple from the Council to symbolize), then what's left will ultimately devolve into a heartless technocracy.

Anyway, I think you're giving your reviewers too much credit in assuming their opinion on the game was influenced by its politics. From my short reading of the top Google results for Primordia reviews, my working conjecture is that the reviewers couldn't navigate their way out of their own arses with a quest compass. Some guy even complained that dipping a rag in oil in order to better clog a hole with it is too obscure of a train of thought for him. You should make more puzzles involving the use of iPads, I think, then your games would sell a lot better.

 

[MRY]

Well, the political vision you describe is a nice one, and it's nice to have it ascribed to Primordia! The truth is, my own politics and ethics are simply a messy patchwork (and not even a constant patchwork, at that). With Primordia, I just tried my best to give a "voice" to various ideologies. Horatio is probably a good example of what you're talking about -- the sort of classic American vision of rugged self-sufficiency, independence, and commitment to the common good -- but I'm not sure his political vision is "correct" within the game, even if he is the hero. And by the end, he's moderated his stance a bit.

While I'd love to write off the game's critics like that, I don't think it's quite right. It's not like Rock Paper Shotgun is full of next-generation gaming novices, and Richard Corbett (who managed to slam us in PC Gamer, GameSpy, Twitter, and the comments thread in RPS) is an old hand at adventure gaming. I really can't say why the game didn't work for them, but some of their criticism are well-taken -- I'm pretty sure the game would've been better with more puzzle diversity, a slightly more spaced-out conclusion (perhaps the emergency elevator should have been -- as Victor always wanted -- a gondola/cable car that dropped you in a different segment of the city (the Cathedral area?) from which you returned via the tunnel leading into the other side of the Main Street subway station), at least one more pass through the Crispin jokes to weed out the lousy ones. It's possible they over-valued their criticisms relative to the good things in the game, but I don't think they were out to lunch.