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First enemy Redcaps revealed

Zarkes

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Introducing: redcaps
Written by Chris
Posted on April 16, 2014

One of the stranger and less imaginatively named creatures of the forest, redcaps are easily recognised by their well . . . by their red caps. Should they lose their crimson hats, or the cap lose its colour, then a redcap will die*. This threat renders this branch of forest fey both aggressive and highly wary of rain. Finding this limitation to their lifespans to be less than helpful, redcaps have taken to hammering nails into their own heads, thus securing their cap and preventing it from drying out. Fear of sudden death (added to having nails in their heads) has made redcaps a fairly psychotic bunch, prone to fits of violence and villainy.

From the halberd-armed foot soldier and catapult-toting skullchucks, to their will-using shamans, redcaps are a common sight in Rosewood and represent a real danger to the unwary traveller. Indeed fear of Redcaps is so rife, that it’s been known for travellers to meet a misfortunate end simply by wandering into a nervous village wearing the same coloured headgear.

*Of course, Heroes should note that hitting a redcap with a big pointy sword, or a crossbow bolt will do the job just as efficiently.
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Dark Drakan

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Interesting looking creatures, this must have came out while I was away for the weekend.
 

Zarkes

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I can just imagine Sterling running around pulling their caps off.
 

xxNick

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Redcaps have been around since the announcement trailer eight months ago. Probably not as developed as they are today. They probably had some concept stuff going on for the promotions, nothing new, TLC is littered with content that was used solely for E3.

Still I'm surprised we haven't seen more, completely new ideas and concepts out of them.
 

Zarkes

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Redcaps have been around since the announcement trailer eight months ago. Probably not as developed as they are today. They probably had some concept stuff going on for the promotions, nothing new, TLC is littered with content that was used solely for E3.

Still I'm surprised we haven't seen more, completely new ideas and concepts out of them.
What all did they leave out of TLC? I remember seeing bears and Bloodstone pieces in Fable Explorer.
 

xxNick

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What all did they leave out of TLC? I remember seeing bears and Bloodstone pieces in Fable Explorer.

The short answer is a lot, but I'm not talking about unused/removed/unfinished content. I'm talking about things that were made specifically for a showing at E3. Cutscenes and test scripts showing off the hero's morphing, sword in the stone, punch club, various other things. Special animations were used for promotional stuff, made for commercials and trailers to make it look like there was cool stuff to do in the game when really that cool stuff hadn't quite been made yet, everything they were showing was more or less hacked together for the purposes of hyping the game. Saw this with Fable 3 as well, in a trailer, the hero using Fable 2's hammer animation while holding a sword. That's not real gameplay, that's just scripted stuff for recording to put in a trailer. Everyone does this stuff.

Back to Legends, I think they only recently completed the majority of work on redcaps, and what we saw in the trailer was likely made just for that trailer.
 

Zarkes

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The short answer is a lot, but I'm not talking about unused/removed/unfinished content. I'm talking about things that were made specifically for a showing at E3. Cutscenes and test scripts showing off the hero's morphing, sword in the stone, punch club, various other things. Special animations were used for promotional stuff, made for commercials and trailers to make it look like there was cool stuff to do in the game when really that cool stuff hadn't quite been made yet, everything they were showing was more or less hacked together for the purposes of hyping the game. Saw this with Fable 3 as well, in a trailer, the hero using Fable 2's hammer animation while holding a sword. That's not real gameplay, that's just scripted stuff for recording to put in a trailer. Everyone does this stuff.

Back to Legends, I think they only recently completed the majority of work on redcaps, and what we saw in the trailer was likely made just for that trailer.
I was so saddened when none of this was in Fable 2, the game showcased in this trailer looks so awesome.
 

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Lionhead catches a LOT of heat for that. I've described it before as a ritualistic part of the Fable game purchasing experience to be disappointed almost immediately upon playing. But it's certainly not exclusive to Lionhead. Zenimax is catching hell right now over ESO, and not too long ago From Software's Dark Souls II failed to deliver on the unspoken promise offered by their trailers.

This has been going on forever. Dungeon Siege II, my first PC RPG experience and what I use as a baseline standard for all games, had a pretty cool trailer and some of the coolest CG movies I had seen at that point, and it's still ranked pretty high up on my list to be honest. BUT!!! Gameplay vastly differed from the trailer and the game's videos and everything else. I was disappointed. However, the game was very good (to me, at least), so much so that I found it more than redeemed. The problem with games now is that, well, they're not that great.

*********
Redirecting back to topic:
Taking trailers with a healthy pinch of salt, following the development gives you a better idea of what will actually be in the game. The only point I wanted to make was that redcaps aren't new, but perhaps their development is finished or at least enough so that they can definitely, definitely confirm that they're going to be in the game. It's good, it means they're not coming out with all kinds of stuff that will be in the game, but instead are talking about stuff that is in the game. An important lesson that has hopefully been learned by those at Lionhead by now. We'll see when we get the final product.
 

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An important lesson that has hopefully been learned by those at Lionhead by now. We'll see when we get the final product.

That's assuming that the people that care are the ones calling the shots. Where I work, Devs work for the business side. They come to me and say, "This is what we want to see". I only say no if it's strictly impossible.
 

Zarkes

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That's assuming that the people that care are the ones calling the shots. Where I work, Devs work for the business side. They come to me and say, "This is what we want to see". I only say no if it's strictly impossible.
You work in the industry Keshire?
 

Dark Drakan

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I'm personally getting bored by the 1080p, 60 FPS debate as that's all "gamers" seem to go on about currently. GFX & overall visuals seem to have taken centre stage over gameplay & companies are spending more & more times making games look pretty. Rather than pushing boundaries in more important ways & revolutionising genres once again.
 

Zarkes

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I've done contract work before. But my day job is an iSeries Engineer. I spend my days writing COBOL, RPG, Java, and CL.
That's cool Dude, are you self taught or did you go to school to learn programming?
 

Zarkes

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I'm personally getting bored by the 1080p, 60 FPS debate as that's all "gamers" seem to go on about currently. GFX & overall visuals seem to have taken centre stage over gameplay & companies are spending more & more times making games look pretty. Rather than pushing boundaries in more important ways & revolutionising genres once again.
Graphics in games the past few years have really started to annoy me actually. The industry went from dynamic lighting and shading and all that to some weird form of claymation I tell you. For instance the difference between Oblivion and Skyrim, Oblivion with mods still looks stunning to this day but Skyrim the way it was designed looks like crap, everything looks like playdoe. The same can be said for Fable Anniversary, not that its awful but you can see the different design approaches when it comes to graphics. You see engine trailers for Unreal and and Crysis, which alot of studios license in their games, yet you never see anything come out with the same level of beauty as their tech demos.

Besides Minecraft, I haven't seen anything groundbreaking or revolutionary in along time. Minecraft is a perfect example of what you are talking about though graphics are meaningless if the game actually has gurth.
 

Dark Drakan

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Graphics in games the past few years have really started to annoy me actually. The industry went from dynamic lighting and shading and all that to some weird form of claymation I tell you. For instance the difference between Oblivion and Skyrim, Oblivion with mods still looks stunning to this day but Skyrim the way it was designed looks like crap, everything looks like playdoe. The same can be said for Fable Anniversary, not that its awful but you can see the different design approaches when it comes to graphics. You see engine trailers for Unreal and and Crysis, which alot of studios license in their games, yet you never see anything come out with the same level of beauty as their tech demos.

Besides Minecraft, I haven't seen anything groundbreaking or revolutionary in along time. Minecraft is a perfect example of what you are talking about though graphics are meaningless if the game actually has gurth.

I personally dont really 'get' Minecraft but yeah I get your point. I can see why others enjoy it after seeing what they have crafted but personally its not for me.

If a poor game has great GFX its still a poor game but you can have a great game that can have average GFX. Far too many gamers are obsessed with GFX over gameplay and its getting tiring.
 

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I personally dont really 'get' Minecraft but yeah I get your point. I can see why others enjoy it after seeing what they have crafted but personally its not for me.

If a poor game has great GFX its still a poor game but you can have a great game that can have average GFX. Far too many gamers are obsessed with GFX over gameplay and its getting tiring.

Minecraft is great in it's simplicity. My kids like building in creative like it's a giant box of legos. I like trying to etch out my own little area of existence in survival. It comes close to being a MMO because there is no limit to the amount of people that can be on a server. And while I have my problems with the mod community itself, what they've done is amazing.

 

Dark Drakan

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Minecraft is great in it's simplicity. My kids like building in creative like it's a giant box of legos. I like trying to etch out my own little area of existence in survival. It comes close to being a MMO because there is no limit to the amount of people that can be on a server. And while I have my problems with the mod community itself, what they've done is amazing.

My step son loves it and is constantly building things then blowing them up with TNT usually but I was always geared more towards the survival mode. I like the concept of it but overall its just not for me, I have seen what others have built though and its mindblowing. I mean Kings Landing from Game of Thrones stands out as its so detailed...

VGLM1MI.jpg


Not to mention...

A duo of terrifyingly dedicated Minecraft experts claim to have built a 1:1 recreation of Denmark in Markus Persson's pioneering PC game, Minecraft.
If that doesn't bamboozle you enough, get this: The country is made up of about four trillion bricks and weighs about a terabyte if you want to download it. Creators Simon Kokkendorf and Thorbjørn Nielsen Geodatastyrelsen put the virtual nation together by applying public data on roads and building frameworks.

According to The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, this makes Denmark the first ever country to be devised in Minecraft. No ****.

One key ambition for the project lies in its educational value - pupils now have the chance to explore a 3D model of Denmark that can be used in social studies and geography classes.

SOURCE - CVG

 

Keshire

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My step son loves it and is constantly building things then blowing them up with TNT usually but I was always geared more towards the survival mode. I like the concept of it but overall its just not for me, I have seen what others have built though and its mindblowing. I mean Kings Landing from Game of Thrones stands out as its so detailed...

VGLM1MI.jpg


Seeing that zoomed/tilt-shifted doesn't come anywhere close to actually walking the streets. The scale is probably insane. I'd wouldn't want to do it unless I had an oculus rift. :D

Scale aside, with minecraft's complete lack of AI, everything will feel very.... Dead. Lifeless.

Nice I envy you alittle I want a Bachelors in Computer Science.

Meh, I don't even use it. Like I said, my day job is as an engineer.
 
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