Hendrix

I have suggested in other threads that JA3 should have a wide area of options for difficulties, gameplay mechanics and complexity. Like the tons of guns option in JA2. While most of us here on the forum would probably be OK with 1.13 levels of details and mechanics, I find it very hard to belive that there is a large enough audience out there that would be willing to dive into it. Many do not know and definitely do not care about the difference between A Beretta 92F and Glock 17. Or a Steyr AUG and a FAMAS etc. They couldn't give a damn about LBE gear or different frag grenades. They just want to sit down and play the game whitout a lot of hassle. I do think it is important to have options in the game that will allow the game to reach as large audience as possible. A lot of the rpgs released in the last 10 or so years has had a story mod or equivalent. I belive that could be a good option for JA3 aswell.

Yeah the Countach is awesome, personally though I like the Lamborghini Miura even more. Yeah Interceptor is a beast, my favourite classic muscle car is the Dodge Challenger. Speaking of the Cannonball Run movies and Speed Zone, I have Ray Steven's Cannonball and Rocky Burnette's Perfect Crime on my favourite playlist on Spotify. Damn it is hard to keep the speed limit when those songs start. 😂 Aren't you Norwegian? I thought you lived outside? There's no bad weather, only bad clothes! Yesterday was fantastic here. Only wish I had gone ice fishing.

Used auto-translate to read the article. Interesting (and nice) to read that the environment effects different aspects of the game. Other than that not much new info. But the writer seems to like what he played.

👍🏻 First saw Convoy a bit later in life (16'ish), I did treasure the VHS tape I had of Smokey & The Bandit though. 🎶 Eastbound and doooown, loaded up and trucki'n. 🎶 Oh, and the Cannonball movies aswell!

@anon474 I think that is universal for all wild animals. Today many "city-folks" are "Disney-ficated" to the degree that they have 0 understanding of nature and fauna. They seam to belive that animals in the forest gets togheter and sing songs and dance around every now and then and nature is a magical place were nothing bad happens. When I was a kid, nature-shows on the tv used to show predators kill their prey and eat it. Today if they show a predator going on a hunt at all, they often only show the ones that ends in failure and while showing the Gazelle happily skip back to it's herd, the narrator goes something like: "I guess Mr. Lion will have to go hungry today", whit a voice that sounds like the Lion is stupid for not ordering a pizza. A few years ago a man here in Sweden was driving on a dirt road and happend upon a bear whom just had taken down a moose and started to eat it alive (yes they do that). He captured the event and posted the video on whatever social media he used and there was a damn outcry of people who questioned him why he didn't help the moose from that evil bear! I belive he was even threatened.

Absolutely. When this forum started there were many of us practicality screaming: DO NOT MAKE THIS XCOM RESKINNED TO JA! I know what you mean, personally I am still in the mindset of giving Haemimont the benefit of the doubt (like @Solaris_Wave wrote) when it comes to the tone of the game. From what little we have seen when it comes to gameplay I thought the animations looked a bit stiff, unfinished and a bit to cartoony but so far they have shown a very early build, maybe even just a proof of concept. Much like you stated @trueman11, JA2 has a very serious tone at it's base, it is a gritty story and narrative at heart, animations are in the realistic spectra rather than cartoon-ish, the same goes for the environment and colour palette. Arulco feelt like a third world war thorn country. The humor and silliness was then just a bit of sprinkle on the top. I really hope Haemimont can replicate that tone. I have a very hard time to judge things before I see them as a whole, that's just who I am. So I am often able to ignore/not care about some smaller aspects I do not like, if a game as a whole is good. That does not mean that I eat whatever is served however, and to this day I have not played a single game that, to me, was perfect. But I do think that we need to have realistic expectations of JA3, we won't get "JA2 1.13 3D with a new story".

Forgot to mention in my first post in this thread that sure I do get immersed in the way that I can picture the mercs high fiving each other after a intense battle or thanking one another for a patch up or save from a nasty situation. Still remember my second attempt at playing JA2 vanilla, I had hired Wolf and Grizzly (don't remember who else) and since I still didn't really know what I was doing, a couple of days into the campaign I had put Grizzly in a bad situation in one of the forest sectors west of Drassen, he'd taken 2 or 3 hits and several red shirts were closing in for the kill. I was able to get Wolf close to the situation and in quick succession dispatch the red shirts whit his shotgun. When the last enemy fell Grizzly stated: "I knew there was something I liked about Wolf!" That simple line of dialogue completely hooked me and to this day in almost every new JA2 campaign I start, I team the 2 togheter. Magic, Ice and Blood are another group I often team together.

I agree with you on a personal level, my post was merely a my own beliefs of what has made Bethesda's games so successful to a broad audience. I know several people whom never even looked at rpgs of any kind before, who then played Skyrim and/or Fallout 4 feverishly.

Yupp, let us hope that the tools are powerful enough to be able to make what we want. They have stated several times that they are aware of the importance modding has had for JA2.

Me personally I have not seen enough yet to make a judgement. I would probably need to see a few hours of actual in game uninterrupted gameplay to get a feel.

I DEMAND a Scandinavian accent just like the Swedish Chef from The Muppets show!

I know I mentioned in another thread long ago that nowadays I view games Baldur's Gate 1&2 and Fallout 1&2 more like interactive books than games. Being an avid reader (or atleast I used to be) filling out the "blanks" in the games came natural to me. Back in the mid 90's to early 2000 me and a friend used to make up stories and narratives while we played Heroes of Might and Magic 2&3 togheter. However I do not think I have ever been as immersed as you describe in your post above@trueman11. But sure I have often "trembled" with fear when an unexpected black shirt has suddenly turned up at point blank range from my merc or interupted them and unleashed hell upon my team. But to be as immersed as you, well I both envy and feel sorry for you. Envy because of the level of immersion, but is it then at all possible for you to get any joy from a more modern game? I mean would you even need a new game? Would it be possible for any developer at any budget to succeed to give you that level of immersion? I do not write this as critique to you I just wonder if it is possible and what would be required? Myself I have realised that JA2 1.13 with all it's moddability has spoiled me and in no way will we get a JA3 with all of it's features. Again in another old thread I listed what I require to view JA3 as a true successor to JA2 and I wont make that list again. To sum it up as short as possible without details I hope to see the strategical, financial and tactical gameplay we saw in JA2's strategical/laptop screen and a tactical combat that is a mix of JA2 and Silent Storm. So far I stay optimistic but very cautious since even small deviation from vanilla JA2 core concept could spoil the game for me. And who knows, maybe I wont like JA3 when it is released, but a fair amount of companies have started to actually "fix" their products aftet release or maybe expansion shows up down the line. Maybe we get a revive of the franchise and a JA4 that is good? Maybe I win the eurojackpot lottery and I can finally buy the damn IP and create my own JA game! 😂

@Solaris_Wave brown ones?😅 Joke aside, we only got the classic Brown Bear in Scandinavia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_bear They have increased a great deal during the last 30 years and today they are fairly common although they are shy and hard to spot. I have not seen one in the wild but I have seen fresh dropings and tracks on several occasions. They are not aggressive and unprovoked attacks are very very uncommon, normally restricted to people who hunt them and injure the bear or dogs agitating the bear to attack. But of course it is a wild animal with survival instincts so you have to be respectful of that. One should be especially wary if you spot bear cubs in the wild, because momma bear is not far away and VERY protective.

I have lost count on the number of times I have modded Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, 4 and NV beyond salvation and had to restart from scratch because of broken/corrupted save files. Out of those games I belive I have only finished Oblivion's main quest. Can't wait to repeat it in Starfield! 😂 Jokes aside, I belive that Bethesda's success in games is ease of access and that they are (relatively) thrilling to explore, what's beyond that next hill? / I wonder what I'll find in this dungeon? You can approach them at any level of difficulty that suits you, story/casual to hardcore. You can focus on the aspects that suits you, play trough the story, focus on side/faction quest, just explore sites, investigate lore, fool around, etc. You are never punished for ignoring stuff because they simply wait for you to come back later. And if there is some aspect of the game is missing for you or you want it to work differently, check out the mods at Nexus for a solution. You do not have to be super invested in the game and many people simply want to play a game at a level that is some casual fun for them. I myself starting to become one of them out of 2 reason. 1. Nowadays I lack the amount of free time to be super invested in games. I normaly have 2 - 3 hours a week to play, and maybe 4 hours every other/third weekend playing multiplayer/coop with friends for an evening. So a 100 hour game would take me a year to finish. 2. Nowadays I lack the amount of energy I required to be super invested in games. My work consists of solving problems, correcting other peoples work from a technical aspect and keeping track of how things depend on or affect other aspects of my area of expertise. So a lot of days after work I just do not have the cognitive energy for a game I really have to focus on. Instead prefearing to play games on a casual level or games I already know the mechanical aspects of by heart. Most of my friends, whom are around 40, who still play games say the same thing. They tend to focus on 1 or 2 games they play in their free time. I think there are many games out there alot more interesting when it comes to story/game mechanics etc. than whatever Bethesda's next release will be, but damn me I must say they are easy to just pick up an play.

Many of the mercs in JA1 and JA:DG never made it into JA2, wich one would you like to see return in JA3? I was personally sad that Snake was killed of. So if I got to pick the return of 1 merc it would probably be Kelly, although Boss is a strong contender as well. Do you have a favourite you would like to see return in JA3?

Nothing wrong with having a FEW in different ways silly characters for a comic relief, But the overall tone of the game should be serious. The mercs from AIM in JA2 were on the serious side. From the original AIM roster I can not remember even 1 merc that was there simply to be a funny character. Many of them had some quirk etc but nothing over the top. As for the mercs from M.E.R.C, well they were definitely more on the colourful side, but they were usable. But if you look back on the merc roster from JA1 and JA:DG most of the really silly mercs were dropped (and sadly Snake aswell 😭).

@LoboNocturno Forgot to reply to your posts about hunting in Africa, fascinating read! I am not afraid of snakes, while I do not find them pleasant either. But not in a million years would I hunt them in the way you describe! Give me a rifle and a pissed of bear any day of the week!

Great review @LoboNocturno I never played JA or DG to any great lenght (mostly on friends pc). But I agree with your assessment. Myself back then I played Wages of War (mentioned it in another thread) wich had a much more serious tone. My greatest grief with that game was the limited amount of voices (only 1 male and 1 female generic voice set for all characters). While there is (by todays standard) only 4 years between JA1 and JA2 that was ALOT of of time and difference in technology and processing power back then, games were also developed in a much shorter timespan. The studios mostly went by what they thought would work and what would be a cool game.

Yeah I got a 45 min drive ('bout 55 kilometers) to get to my workplace, so I get the same reaction every now and then. Luckily I have the possibility to work from home a couple of days a week. Yeah the winters around here has really changed from when I was a kid. Back then (80's - 90's) the first of snow would show up in the end of November/ early December and stay until late april. Now we are lucky to get snow in December at all and having it stay through out March. Also we often get rain instead of snowfall. The winters are alot warmer aswell. Nice. I think we will have to wait a few more weeks for the migrating birds to show up around here. Nope! Disastrous! 😂 Our bad luck continued throughout the entire season. Saw alot of black grouse and capercaillie during autumn so I was hoping for some good top-hunt during late January to mid February. First day of hunting however I made it 20 meters from the car and into the terrain when my left snowshoe breaks. Tried to push on but it was simply impossible. Sounds like our cat! 😂 Had a nice day today atleast, made a short hike to a nearby hilltop and grilled some hotdogs.

@GODSPEED Hey Buddy! 🍻 Winter has not given up yet. -10 to -15 Celsius during the nights and around 0 to +5 during the afternoon. There is still between 0.5 and 1 meters of snow outside, so this year I think we can expect the snow to stay until mid april. But if I go to the coast there is hardly any snow at all. Last year however the snow was gone by now. As for were I live and if it is considered to be in the country or not that's a matter of perspective I guess. 😂 Someone from Stockholm, Malmö or Gothenburg would consider this to be Bumfuck Nowere with Polar bears, while someone from the rural places in the very north claims that the area is a part of Stockholm (wich is a 5 hour drive away). I would estimate that 85 - 90% of the population is concentrated to the southern 1/3 of Sweden. I live in a suburban area on the outskirts of a small town, so it is just at the edge of what further west counts as a rural area. Then I got the Baltic coast just 1.5 kilometers to the east. I grew up and lived in a rural area about a hour drive west of here until a few years ago though (the same area where I still hunt). As for mountains, the area and even provinces around here are made up of a billowing (I think thats the right term) hilly forest landscapes. They are not like the high mountains above tree level in the west of Sweden on the boarder to Norway or the step and dramatic Norwegian fjords. What about you? How's Montreal?

Like @Kordanor said, I am really glad to see that you are sticking to a classless system! One question, can you "save" a perk point when a merc increases in level and allocate it later once the merc hit a threshold for a perk? For example: Grizzly has an Agility score of 69 and is level 2 according to the picture in the post. Maybe I would like to increase his mobility and allocate his first perk point among the Agility perks. But once he reaches level 3 he still has a Agility score of 69. Does this force me to choose a perk he already has reached the threshold for or can I wait and save the perk point for later once his Agility has increased?

Hey! I saw it first! 😂 I mentioned the game over in the "While we wait...what's there to scratch the itch?" thread. But I agree it looks promising! I also said that maybe a "JA: Alien vs Predator" spinoff could be cool.

This game showed up in my YouTube feed today. Isometric RTS where you command a squad of marines through missions. Edit: Hey! How's about a JA: Aliens vs Predator spin-off?

@Solaris_Wave I myself think it would be better to have perks/skills and other stats effect what weapons a merc is skilled with than a whole bunch of marksmanship stats. Marksmanship could then be a base stat and the rest applying like a bonus. Marksmanship + Strenght + skills/perks could then be calculated to how effective a merc is with maybe assault rifles, machineguns and heavy weapons. Marksmanship + Dexterity + skills/perks for one handed guns. Marksmanship + Agility + skills/perks, for shotguns and smgs. Even wisdom could come in to play for sniper rifles (needed to calculate shots). Just writing these as examples, I am not saying this is the way to go necessary.

Awesome to read that you have taken your time to actually investigate the characters and the lore around them! I think the largest mistake done by earlier tries to re-invent the IP is to not make the mercs unique enough. In my opinion the personalaties of the mercs and npcs was always JA's biggest strenght. It will be really interesting so see how the dynamic approach to merc's relations to eachother works in a playtrough. I understand your choice of equipment not altering the appearance of the mercs, because everyone would end up looking the same (JA:BiA). But it would have been really cool to see some kind of development/changes of the gear the mercs carries throughout a playtrough. Just to get a feeling of progress. Great to see IMP is coming back. I am looking forward to take the questions for the first time! 😅