The game is being slowly worked on, I have been facing issues with funding and dealing with depression, but plans of cancelling or abandoning the game are not in the table. The full game's documentation is ready, the plot, level sketches (on papper), and everything else is done, and I am aware that everything I plan to do is possible within the engine's limits while still ensuring multiplayer compatibility.
Gore system is solid and optimized. Vegetation is nice and interactive. Weapons are working as intended. Several enemies working as intended. I want to ensure that nobody is getting stuck on walls or freezing in a spot. Nobody is getting catapulted out of the level's bounds, falling through a bottom-less pit, or crushed by a door for daring to walk on the wrong spot. Many games released today, even AAA, can't deliver these things upon actual release, and I am ensuring they work even on the closed alpha build. I have chosen to develop this game vertically, ensuring things are at peak polishment before moving forward with making levels.
Right now I want to finish my Doom mods to get these old projects out of the way so I can proceed with this game.
Changes in the script.
One thing that changed with time however, is the timeframe of the game. The original plan was to start the game at the operation in Callisto, and have the Martian War left just as a background text to describe the player character's military expertise. I decided that "Show, don't tell" is a better artistic direction, the first episode of the game will take place in such war, it will allow the introduction of both the aliens and the corporate mercenary armies much earlier (corpos were initially only planned to show up on the last episode), and will help to make the game's gameplay and ambients feel more varied. For the game's demo, I'm thinking about a mini intro campaign taking place on Earth defending a city from a harassment attack of cyborg invasion from the corporate armies, which without spoiling the game's big baddies, would help giving the player a better idea of what is to be a Terran, and a Global Marine.
In the old game's design, everything would have taken place in the cold brutalist capital city of Callisto, some areas in the mountains around the city, then the alien dimension, then space. Mere flashbacks to the Martian war were planned with one or two levels. The game's lore says "The Global Order Alliance Marines are the biggest mean warriors ever because I, the writer, is telling you so, so pick your gun, and start shooting these monsters".
In the new design, you will see old Earth and it's brutalist cities, you will land on the red boreal forests of Mars on the greatest military operation mankind ever seen, crawl through trenches, raid bunkers on rocky mountains, secure medieval-looking villages, and conquer the shinny, Bauhaus-styled capital city of Mars, you will already get a glimpse of the alien dimension in the best Lovecraftian way possible.
Now, you have seen it all, the Global Order Alliance Marines are Earth's finest, the toughest men and women to have ever lived, they can fight in any battlefield, at Earth or not, they can face corporate cyborg abominations, greedy mercenary armies with no sense of right or wrong, extremist communist guerrillas that engages in non-conventional warfare, and cruel hi-tech space nationalists with superior technology, and they can crush them all. For these Marines, being stuck in a foreign planet fighting monsters is just another glorious day at The Corps.
Then you move to a more realistic imagined city of Callisto, an incredibly luxurious Art Deco city in a frozen white planet. Then again space, and fully seeing the alien dimension.
(Note: Nothing will be wasted, however. Changing Callisto's aesthetics does not means I am throwing away any assets already made, the depressing brutalist cityscape you see in the current trailers will all be used to show Earth. Many people told me that a city that is meant to be a paradise and bait Terrans into moving to it being designed as a sad dirty Soviet metropolis makes no sense, and I am hearing feedback.)
The corporate armies, instead of being a static enemy, will be more dynamic. On your second encounter with them, you will be able to see how after one year they adapted to the G.O.A. tactics and improved their weapons and strategies.
With this, instead of a slow cliche start, the game can start with the war spectacle of what people saw at VietDoom and Extermination Day multiplied by ten, then dive into a rollercoaster of emotions, leaving the player eager to know what will happen next. This will make the game far more enjoyable and with more variety.
I already told the story of "the super soldier that finds himself in a remote place stuck with monsters and drags himself into a war and triumphs over a classical evil" story in Extermination Day, and I don't think people are expecting to play Brutal Fate and feel like they are playing Extermination Day 2. id Software told that story first. There are like ten FPS games on Steam right now telling that same story and another ten coming up. I have nothing against this style of game, and I actually enjoy lots of them, but I don't want to create a game like this.
I don't want to make a story about a super soldier developed by the government or a secret organization. I don't want to make a story about the chosen one who will follow a prophecy and will cleanse the world of evil. I'm so tired of games with this story. I think 99% of the action I games I ever played have this plot. I want to tell the story of common men and women who joins a great crusade that will either destroy or save mankind, but for this, they will need to face horrors both man-made and incomprehensible, and also fight themselves, their old ideas, their hatred, they need to find strength both to fight powerful enemies but to also change themselves.
Demo when?
I do not plan to release a demo that shows the game in a raw state. Too many games on Steam have a super early demo released, then no updates for years, and the game gets forgotten.
I don't want to release a demo until I am pretty sure the first episode of the game is nearing completion, and I can release it at the same year, possibly a few months apart.
Yes, the game will come in Early Access, as I need that to get the proper funding to pay for professional voice actors and a crew to help me polish the game. And I understand how people are averse to Early Access. I have paid for many Early Access games myself that got abandonned months, if not weeks after Early Access launch.
But it won't feel half-cooked, it will come with one episode that feels like a full campaign, with a boss and two possible outcomes that at first acts as flavor, but makes a difference at the game's ending. Then extra game modes, like Horde Mode, full mod and multiplayer compatibility.
Just be patient. There are lots of other great boomer shooters to play right now, and nobody has anything to gain with a half-cooked, rushed demo riddled with issues and incomplete levels.
For now, all I have to thank you all who still keeping the tens of thousands of wishlists. This is the game I dreamed about when I was a child, the big fps with lots of big guns, gore, destructible environments, a branching story with multiple ends, and modding and multiplayer capabilities. Someday I want to sit back, crack open a cold one, join a server, and play through the entire campaign with strangers on the internet. I want to play this game as much as you do. I will release this game. I will not give up. This is a personal promise.
- Sgt. Mark IV
