Consortium

[Owain Taggart]

Has anyone played this? I picked it up on GOG during their summer sale, but I hadn't gotten to it until today. It's quite interesting. Visually, it kind of reminds me of System Shock, but there are so many other elements to it that remind me of other things. In fact, the most direct comparison I can give is that it feels like System Shock meets Star Trek. But in technical terms, it's really hard to pin down what this game is exactly, but so far it's a great experience.

There's so much going on within the game, and I'm currently feeling overwhelmed. Picture yourself as part of a crew on a Trek-like ship, with all kinds of activity going on all around you, trying to respond to orders that come in as objectives. I'm still trying to process how the game mechanics work, but it seems like the objectives you're given are time-sensitive. If someone gives you something to do, you can't just wander off or ignore them. Yes, your ship is fully explorable. You can walk everywhere and interact with your crewmates, including converse with them. And then there's the shooter aspect. I'm not terribly far into the game, but from what I gather, you'll be boarded and then you'll have to fend them off. And the little I've experienced of the shooting so far has been difficult. But apparently you can play through the whole game without shooting anything and opt for diplomacy instead.

The game itself is rather intense. It does a great job of dropping you into an unfamiliar scenario, and is oozing atmosphere, especially when the bridge aka control center goes red in an emergency. When conversations are going on, you do have to reply quickly, as you're on a timer. But all this just adds to the feeling that everything is happening fast. And the topics you do choose can end up affecting your alignment. Fun stuff so far.

Here's an article about the game:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/22/impressions-consortium-2/

Website for the game:
http://consortium-game.com/

 

[Owain Taggart]

Here are some screenshots. There's a red glow in all of them because of a red-alert event.

 

[SPCTRE]

It sounds really intriguing. Also, that amount of praise by Alan Smith alone makes me want to try it.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, it's really quite fascinating. I love the visuals, for one. It's clear what their influences are. A bit of Star Trek, a bit of System shock. The feel I get from it is they wanted to create a more open-ended Elite Force-like game, where the decisions you make affect the flow of the game. In a sense, it's also sort of like an interactive movie, in that events will continue to happen around you despite your involvement or not, but might have very different results. For example, there's one scene where you're examining a murdered body with two other crewmen, and as they start to move the body, you can yell at them not to move the body as it's evidence. As I was gawking around, I missed the interaction and they went about moving the body anyway. The ship itself is small, but it's got everything you would expect from Trek, like a main computer room, down to escape pods. They never explicitly state where everything is located, but my main source of confusion and missing specific orders was due to my unfamilarity with the ship. But that said, it makes you feel like you're living it.

My only problem currently is that there are minigames, some that are required in order to progress. One particular minigame is like missile command in a 3d space, where you have to protect your ship from missiles and other ships from all around you, which is very difficult even on easy. So, currently I'm stuck at that point. I wish they'd give you the option of skipping it.

 

[SPCTRE]

A bit of Star Trek, a bit of System shock. The feel I get from it is they wanted to create a more open-ended Elite Force-like game, where the decisions you make affect the flow of the game.

Okay, I'm sold

 

[Owain Taggart]

I guess I should clarify that by saying that, I meant it in terms of ship exploration rather than gameplay. The gameplay itself isn't anything like Elite Force. If anything, it's more involved.

 

[martok2112]

It looks pretty cool from the screenshots. Some of the set pieces make me think of Tron.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, there's that too, particularly during the training scenarios, which put you in a holodeck-like room, but with Tron-like colors.

 

[Owain Taggart]

So, I've passed that part I had trouble with. Apparently I was doing it all wrong! Doh! I was waiting until after the guy explained everything instead of starting to shoot everything down, and it was quite easy once I figured that out. Now I've been tasked as a sidequest to help with some repairs, just like they do in Trek

So, I've had to crawl through Jefferys tubes and find the location that needs repairing...

And interrogate the crew about the aforementioned murder:

I should add that my line of questioning pissed off the guy on the right, who left and didn't want to do anything with me.

And more exploring, looking for crew to interrogate:

And these two crewmen fixing things were where I was tasked with helping out with repairs. Behind it is the brig, and above that and a little further aft are the shuttle pods.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The Kickstarter for the sequel is up. Seems they didn't make enough money from the first game to fully fund the second.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, there's also the fact that the second game will be much more ambitious with a higher budget, which they say will be a bit more like Deus Ex with an open-ended nature. The first game is much more like a prologue and universe introduction in that sense. So, I don't think it's so much that they didn't make enough money from the first game, but that they just need more overall to be able to make the next game.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well, there's also the fact that the second game will be much more ambitious with a higher budget, which they say will be a bit more like Deus Ex with an open-ended nature. The first game is much more like a prologue and universe introduction in that sense. So, I don't think it's so much that they didn't make enough money from the first game, but that they just need more overall to be able to make the next game.

No, I'm talking about their actual, original plan:

Our original plan was simple: Make Game One with an incredibly low budget and overhead costs so that we would only need to sell a small number of copies in order to self-fund Game Two and continue on from there. Unfortunately it has not quite worked out so simply.

It did not work out that way because the first game had an absolutely disastrous launch (they fully acknowledge this) and they had to spend much more time polishing and fixing it than working on the sequel, so the only way the sequel gets done now is if they can fully fund it via Kickstarter.

They expected that the first game would be very cheap to make but pull in enough sales to fund the second, and that just didn't happen.

Not to be down on them or anything, but making the series they wanted has turned out to be much harder and more expensive than they anticipated.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Oh right... well then yeah

I think they're trying a different direction with the sequel, hoping to catch more money in the process. And yeah, I guess they're just a bit too ambitious. Good luck to them, I guess.

For one thing, I hope the gunplay is much better this time around. It was pretty bad and very hard to hit things in the first game.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

At least from the pitch video, the gunplay looks a lot more engaging.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Good to know, because I did everything I could to try to avoid any confrontations in the first game. I don't know if it was something I was doing wrong, but it seemed like there were a lot of bullet sponges on board.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It was a common complaint. I think they eventually improved it but it just never got to the point of being a good FPS.