Am I understanding this correctly? Ubisoft is allowing third party mods of their 17 year old game that still requires a legal copy to run the mod? While good for the developers and fans, that hardly seems like a concession from Ubisoft
REMIX is a bit different it extracts resources from the game so you could rework and replace them.
Additive only modding is arguably easy, however mods in which you extract and rework assets are more tricky since those assets are protected by their own copyright.
There could be cases in which the licensing agreement that covers those assets may not be compatible with modding since the license the publisher and developer have received is rather restrictive - speedtree generated assets come to mind as Autodesk(?) has or had a rather restrictive license on those, store bought art assets these days also probably have a non mod friendly license.
Then there is the whole thing around using trademark names in your sites and content.
Overall you want an approval especially for a large scale remaster mod.
And publishers/developers that may appear hostile to modders may actually have a valid reason rather than doing it just out of spite.
When I worked at EA it felt so weird to be talking at the office about how cool some mod projects were while simultaneously being forced to implement features specifically designed to make modding much harder.
I've been modding games of EA for over 10 years. I even helped out with a project associated to Battleforge, which was shut down in 2013. But when people tried to go near Microsoft oh wow... they go nuclear and they do it fast.
It's still a separate entity with different legal departments.
To be fair, my experience dates back to around 2005 to 2010.
There is also an anecdote of the "Halogen" mod which wanted to recreate Halo as an RTS (years before Ensemble Studios announced their Halo RTS). Of course they got a cease and desist.
EA has quietly condoned tons of modding projects in the past. Command and Conquer: Generals had a massive modding community and EA allowed them carte blanche, as long as it didn't allow piracy.
I mean, I know "urggh, EA" and they're the big bad and all. And I have plenty of reasons to hate them, but this just sounds like a kneejerk response.
I am still waiting for such a game since I played it back then - FPS with magic, good bow shooting etc. and actual AAA quality. For proper RPG experience there are skyrims of these days, but something lighter, with just missions and not endless bugged half-empty open worlds, something I can easily pick up for few minutes, progress just a bit and then ignore for a month. Or play in one go if possible. Somehow, they nailed playability just right, in Half-life style.
I am overfed with same looking and same experience modern warfares, just like few years ago WWII oversaturated the market. Another potential direction may be say Vietnam-like games.
Sounds like they're eyeing up a remaster or sequel, and wait for the free labor mod community to produce candidates to do so.
I mean it makes sense, they probably won't find someone easily if they put out a job advert, the original developers will have long gone, and you cannot beat someone training themselves over the span of years.
What makes this game great besides the nostalgia factor? Genuinely curious. I play things like NetHack, so a good gameplay mechanic can go a long way with me :)
> What makes this game great besides the nostalgia factor?
Using some very light immersive sim elements and solid first person melee combat, the game rewards you for winning fights unfairly:
- You can lure enemies in front of a trap and kick them into it.
- You can freeze the ground near a cliff and watch enemies go sliding off into the void.
- You can throw an oil jar at the feet of enemies and cast a fire spell to ignite the oil and burn them to death.
- etc.
My only tip when playing is: if you're squaring off with multiple enemies at once and actually using the (very solid) first person combat system, you're probably missing out on some underhanded way to kill one or more of them in that area.
It's an early game by Arkane Studios, who went on to make the Dishonored series, Prey (2017), and Deathloop. It's basically their first iteration on what would become their trademark "stealth/combat with superpowers and player choice" immersive-sim-style gameplay that they refined to great effect in their later games. If you play it stealthily it feels remarkably like Dishonored, in particular.
It's hardly a great game -- the plot is cheesy and there are some frustrating difficulty spikes -- but as an Arkane fan and game design nerd I find it interesting.
Plus, there's a dedicated "boot" key and it's fun to kick orcs off cliffs.
Dark Messiah had unique combat mechanics in hazard filled environments, where you could create all sorts of physics based accidents to eliminate enemies.
Game combat was showcased in the demo which made a lot of people at the time to believe it would be the game of the year. Unfortunately the demo contained all the best levels and the full game fell short with less engaging ones.
I did not play much games since that time so i do not know if some other games outclassed the Dark Messiah combat experience but trying the demo is worth it for a lot of fun in great level design. https://archive.org/details/DarkMessiahMightAndMagicDemo
Good. It's heartbreaking to see modders pour years of love and effort into a game, only to get a cease and desist or DMCA takedown a week after launch.
Looking at you Nintendo. Iwata rolls in his grave.
I’d say they’re more like the Disney of video games. Nintendo absolutely loves using the “vault” strategy pioneered by Disney: sell your games for a limited time and the put them in the vault, only to bring them back again later when the hype has built up. It’s a pretty infuriating strategy for anyone who just wants to buy their favourite Nintendo games.
