Rise of the Argonauts Comments by Robert Purchese

Blimey finally a chance of a good Argonauts game, story brings back memories of Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans movie's way back in the 80's which I loved as a kid, which probably says nothing more than I'm old.

2008...? wow.. way to narrow your release date down ;-)

what do you mean "brings back"? bloody heathen. Go buy then on DVD - Ray Harryhausen movies rock!

the dynamic animations sounds all nice and good, but the icons by dialogue choices seem a bit naff. rather they were hidden so that you weren't hand held if you wanted to increase favour with a particular god.

I kind of like micromanaging my character.. with stats.. and a little dress-up doll that I can cover in armour..

I second that, allen.

Interesting sounding game, though.

I can only hope that the game will end up being a lovely success.

Repeatedly revisiting islands to collect Deeds like 'kill 20 dryads' - sounds like it might turn into a total grind.

Bold Claims for a Greek..........

could be interesting. i am highly sceptical about the combat though. It sounds a good idea but there just isnt enough control surely. If I do a horizontal slash with 'X' button then it might hit a shield or it might hit flesh but how do I vary the height at which he slashes horizontally?

Also, will the player character take damage in the same way, ie one slash to the chest and hes out for the count?

The guy being interviewed sounds weird too, like he's just reading back a press release.

"Rather than stabbing someone 20 times in the chest before they fall down, in our game, when blade meets flesh, expect lethal consequences. Bypass an enemy's shield, and they will no doubt meet a quick and bloody end."

This game just grabbed a place on my top 3 most wanted games.

"By procedurally animating our characters, not only does every combat look and feel different, but those small adjustments matter - changing a sword slash from one that would harmlessly clang off of an enemy's shield, to one that slips underneath it, slicing that enemy in two."

There. I'm sold. This game just took my "Absolutely Number One Must Have Right Now" game award.

Definitely up there with the most wanted. Let's hope they don't fuck it up. :)

Oh I fancy it greek style, sounds promising

The combat system sounds very appealing. That's a good base to make a great game that should turn heads.

Damn thought Argonaut Development Team was being reformed and resurrected.

Are we going to see some actual innovation here, or is the marketing droid putting a spin on "dumbed down hack and slash"? Hard to say...

It looks a bit "twitch". Lots of us deep RPG players are RPG players because we can't do twitch. And I see hints of grindy-grind-grind in "kill 20 dryads".

But it could be cool to have your development depend on decisions in the game, rather than out-of-game build optimisations. That management stuff is OK, but if it's what you really want then you're better off playing something like Rome Total War than a RPG. Here's hoping they actually deliver on this stuff and it's not just talk like last five RPG developers who promised it...

It's nice to see an end to "stab 20 times", but "cut them in half" is just as silly in the other direction. Just once I'd like a realistic a game where you stab people and they take 15-150 seconds to bleed to unconsciousness; and their mental/physical toughness determines whether they fight until they drop, or faint immediately, or sink to their knees in despair to die unresisting.

Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans - love all of those stop-motion films. I wasn't born when Jason and the Argonauts came out and was too young for Clash of the Titans, but I have them all on DVD and this game sounds as if it could be pretty good. One question though.

WILL THERE BE SKELETONS?

@afghan_jones

"The guy being interviewed sounds weird too, like he's just reading back a press release."

UI don't think these "interviews" are done in person. Rather a bunch of questions get emailed through and answers get written up and returned. I could be wrong in this case of course...

Probably me being cynical but that leveling up system sounds very much like Fable.

"Rise of the Argonauts is a role-playing game that focuses on the strengths of the genre (strong story, character development, meaningful choices) while discarding the antiquated trappings that plague it (endless menus, bag/inventory management, minor statistic-tweaking, etc.)."


WOOHOO!, At Last. why do RPG's need to be all about armour points this, magic points that... Still to this day Shenmue is the closest thing I've seen to a role playing game (which to me purely means some epic kind of game where you play a role... it has nothing to do with stats, grr).

Hopefully this isn't all PR BS :)

sounds very promising, ticks all the right boxes so far, just hoe they follow it up and deliver what they are aiming for.

Proper dynamic combat is the #1 thing I want to see in a game, so this is all sounding rather good.

There's scads of RPGs out there for the uncoordinated stat-farmers already, so it's nice to see someone trying to bring the action back into combat.

Because it takes time out of a timeline that's already likely to be extremely tight or overdue already i'd guess.

Really quite excited about this now.

Love that thing about devoting deeds to different gods to improve your abilities - lovely synergy of system and setting, there.

I'm very much with citizenHUNTER and Quine - all the points and turn-based malarky of RPGs is a holdover from tabletop gaming that video games don't need to adhere to. It's nice to see some more variety in the genre.

But I'm apparently the one person in the world who liked the combat in Jade Empire, so what do I know?

"I'm very much with citizenHUNTER and Quine - all the points and turn-based malarky of RPGs is a holdover from tabletop gaming that video games don't need to adhere to. It's nice to see some more variety in the genre. "

Er...aside from the fact that a lot of us prefer it that way...

"Er...aside from the fact that a lot of us prefer it that way..."

And there's wodges of games like that for you, and always will be. It's variety I'm keen on, and some new approaches, not the death of a certain game type.