Former Monolith developers announce FPS adventure Betrayer - by Mr. Tibbs
ZylonBane on 15/8/2013 at 02:36
You fail hotlinking.
Quote Posted by Muzman
Just to be tedious it's not "black and white" (although that's a misnomer) or greyscale. It's two tone (with red).
No, it's greyscale, but with the high and low brightness levels heavily crushed.
As for the high-contrast aesthetic, I suspect it's going to be a problem for them. Just the one-minute trailer felt like it was giving me eyestrain. Hours of looking at that would be intolerable.
Muzman on 15/8/2013 at 14:46
Actually yeah. Oh well.
I think the most punishing aspect of the lot is the flat white sky. That's probably the first thing should do something about.
Jason Moyer on 15/10/2013 at 12:06
So has anyone else been playing the pre-release builds at all? I have to say, it's quite good. It also has options now that allow you to adjust the saturation of the whites/darks/colors so you can basically play it however you like, visually (I have it set to look basically like an old black & white TV). The combat is a bit easy if you're remotely used to playing with crude weapons in other games (bows, muskets, etc) but the style and atmosphere are top notch, imho.
LoLion on 18/10/2013 at 11:39
I finally got around to trying this out yesterday for about 20 minutes. The whole black and white thing still feels kinda annoying to me, but I can see there are story related reasons for this so… whatever. I do hope that you will be able to do something in the game (like defeating a boss, using some artefact etc) to “turn” the colour back on at some point though.
The gameplay itself is enjoyable in general and there seems to be a clear emphasis on stealth – I really had some good times stalking the undead conquistadors through the wilds so far. The stealth mechanic is simplistic (ie you crouch in the grass and the enemy doesn’t notice you unless you get too close to him from the front) but seems well executed from what I saw so far (which admittedly isn’t much). You actually need to use stealth a lot at least in the initial stage of the game since the bow sux ass (charging conquistador can take like 3-4 arrows and it seems headshots don’t matter) and enemies can apparently kill you with a single hit, which means that getting into conflict with more than one enemy at once is not a good idea. I found a musket, but didn’t use it yet, so perhaps that will change the combat in my favour for a bit. In any case my weapon of choice is tomahawk, which works great in combination with stealth.
Other than the black and white thing the game world looks pretty good (I especially like the effects that wind has on the vegetation) though the outdoor locations seemed a bit too corridor-ish for my liking (again though, I only played for a very short time, getting just past the first fort) and I feel the game would benefit greatly from various random locations like caves, ruins etc that you could explore for some optional loot – hopefully such things can be found later in the game.
The story… well I haven’t seen much of it and the early access version doesn’t seem to have any intro/ingame movies, so I can go only by the few notes I found so far. I guess that story could be interesting, possibly featuring some kind of travel between dimensions, which I guess could explain why the ghost in the first fort claims that he sees you as a ghost and is obviously terrified of you, but the game so far didn’t do much to showcase it.
The problems I noticed so far are that it is quite unclear what is expected of me (so far at least) other than to just walk around and explore and the enemies at times seem to spawn out of thin air (though that could be story related). Anyway the game is interesting and I will definitely play it some more tonight.
EvaUnit02 on 19/10/2013 at 19:28
I'll wait until it's finished. A story-driven, linear FPS doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that fits comfortably with the alpha-funding model. This is the type of game that should probably be experienced in a complete and polished state.
Starker on 15/6/2014 at 23:28
So, now that the game has been out and about for a couple of months, has anyone played the finished version?
How does the stealth, movement, combat, etc hold up?
Jason Moyer on 16/6/2014 at 01:28
I'll probably revisit it at some point, but I found it disappointing. It could have been that I was expecting stealth/skill to be more important in combat than purchasing better gear (and also not realizing that enemies only drop junk weapons, so if you want good gear you have to buy it or dig it up much later in the game) but I found the combat to be mostly annoying and not really necessary, and the repetition of the night-time questing to be forgettable.
fetgalningen on 17/6/2014 at 12:22
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
As for the high-contrast aesthetic, I suspect it's going to be a problem for them. Just the one-minute trailer felt like it was giving me eyestrain. Hours of looking at that would be intolerable.
Exactly, such as the high-contrast colors in Lord of the Rings MMO gave a headache and eye-strain within an hour of playtime or less. Was i the only one noticing that?
henke on 3/7/2014 at 19:51
I'm playing this now. 6 hours in. Made it to Fort Hope.
This is an interesting one! The stealth and combat is pretty barebones, and there's a lot of repetition in the whole structure of the game, and I'm not exactly sure what the overarching story is or what my character's motivation are supposed to be(for now I'm going with "don't die, and try to figure out what's going on here"). Nevertheless, this game does do a lot of things very right. It looks great, the nighttime parts are creepy, and the sounddesign is really great. Sound matters a lot in this game. I've turned off the visual indicators so I'm wearing headphones and relying heavily on my ears to figure out enemy positions and locations of objectives. There's a listen-button, when you press it a sound will emit from the location of your objective. And the combat, while barebones, is unique enough to be interesting. You've got a bow, pistol, musket, a throwable tomahawk, and maybe some explosives. Reloading the pistol and musket takes a long time, so in combat they are, just like the tomahawk, essentially one-use. This necessitates a bit of planning before you plunge into a fight.
Inline Image:
http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3282312366858341345/09DF7CA3FA1F2001726601C1F08E11EFA7AE14C7/1024x576.resizedimageInline Image:
http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/588034112946103423/2C0A0EEFCF0DC777372EEEDDE81F9BF752A9FE79/1024x576.resizedimageInline Image:
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/588034112954347759/1483AE49DA871C11D67BB83FD0A57912BF9F2817/1024x576.resizedimageInline Image:
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/588033999883426649/BACA82F03C86DD63EDF523EF591BA6986841D1D1/1024x576.resizedimageStarker on 4/7/2014 at 06:45
It certainly looks intriguing enough to pick up on a sale, at least. The only thing that's really irking me from watching gameplay videos is the gangsta style bow shooting -- looks more like a toy than a real weapon.
