PAX Prime 2015 Day 2 Recap
The Repopulation
Once again, Above and Beyond Technology has brought their science fiction sandbox MMORPG, The Repopulation, for demo at PAX Prime. Having followed this game going on four years now, I remember seeing them at previous shows and thinking, “Well they have a lot of cool ideas, but it’s still so disjointed that it would take them forever to bring it all together in working order.” Well if forever turns out to be six years of painstaking development, then that statement is spot on. As The Repopulation is finally coming together as a polished and full MMORPG experience.
I got to jump into the character customization for my first experience, to find options available to rival slightly modded Skyrim character creation. Body sliders, chromatic super sliders, and minute facial tweaking are here and working great. You can make one ugly son of a gun, or the He-Man, Master of the Universe, or the weird guy that lives down the street. It will take some time to tweak all you can, but the possibilities in this game are far beyond what I expected.
The tutorial (spanning roughly 4 hours!) is in the final stages of development now, and brings the plethora of details together in a nice story driven package. Although a little text heavy for the general MMO populace, this tutorial tells you everything you need to know to make sense of their character’s multiple skill levels, weapon types, and combat systems. Given the more hardcore gaming group The Repopulation is aimed at, this tutorial should be perfect for getting your feet wet, and perhaps even introducing you to the type of character you want to build yourself out to be.
The combat has improved 10 fold since the early demos we have experienced. Animations are nice and smooth, clicks are responsive, skills have appropriate visuals. Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could test out the martial arts combat style but just the fact they have it in a game like this is an exciting notion.
After spending about 20 minutes in the tutorial I dove into the siege mechanics to see how they’re progressing. In my honest opinion the whole procedure still seems way too drawn out. I don’t like saying ain’t nobody got time for that about an MMO but for sure, very few players will have the time and dedication needed for their siege system. However if this game’s population is large enough, and the various stages of a siege are broken up into being handled by different team members of a larger guild order, it might just work out. This is something I imagine will be tested and tweaked right up to launch date though.
Which amazingly doesn’t seem to be that far away! The Repopulation is entering into their final stages of closed beta testing with a tentative launch date of early 2016. It’s finally happening. The forever development project is nearly set to arrive, and believe me its bringing 6 years of obsessive development and polish with it.
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